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HX64127419 
RC445.N48  N486  1 880  The  answer  of  the  Ne 


RECAP 


I 


T II  E 


ANSWER 


New  Yoek  Neukological  Society 

TO  THE  DOCUMENT  KNOWN  AS  THE 

REPORT  OF  THE  COMMITTEE  ON  PUBLIC  HEALTH 
RELATIVE  TO  LUNATIC  ASYLUMS. 


•     J\^T'.    64, 

IN      S  E  N  A  T  E 

]VIav    a  3,    ISTQ. 


SuBj^rrrTED  to  thf.  N.  Y.  Neurological  Soctety,  and  unanimously  Accepted 

and  okdeked  to  be  printed  by  the  same,  at  its  stated  jteeting, 

held  at  the  acadkmy  op  medicine,  on  january  sixth. 

Eighteen  Hcindred  and  Eighty. 


NEW    YORK: 

TROWS  PRINTING  &  BOOKBINDING  CO]VTPANY, 

201-213  East  Twelfth  Steeet. 
1880. 


Rr.4^4s-.N^{P 


NM(p 


Calumbia  (HnitJersittp 

COLLEGE  OF 

PHYSICIANS  AND  SURGEONS 

LIBRARY 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2010  witii  funding  from 

Open  Knowledge  Commons 


http://www.archive.org/details/answerofnewyorknOOnewy 


THE 


A:t^8WEE 


OF  THE 


New  York  Neurological  Society 

TO  THE  DOCUMENT  KNOWN  AS  THE 

REPORT  OF  THE  COMMITTEE  ON  PUBLIC  HEALTH 
RELATIVE  TO  LUNATIC  ASYLUMS. 


I 


JSTp.    64:, 

IN     SENATE, 

nMay   as,    1879. 


Submitted  to  the  N.  Y.  Neurological  Society,  and  unanimously  Accepted 

and  ordered  to  be  printed  by  the  same,  at  its  stated  meeting, 

held  at  the  academy  of  medicine,  on  january  sixth, 

BiOHTEEN  Hundred  and  Eighty. 


NEW    YORK: 

TROWS  PRINTING  &  BOOKBINDING  COMPANY, 

201-313  East  Twelfth  Stkeet. 

1880. 


REPORT 


The  undersigned,  the  Committee  of  the  New  York  Neurological 
Society,  appointed  to  consider  the  subject  of  Insane  Asylum 
Abuses,  respectfully  report : 

That  it  has  waited  for  the  report  of  the  Senate  Committee  of 
Public  Health  on  the  petition  presented  to  the  Legislature,  before 
making  any  detailed  statement  to  the  Society  on  the  subject. 

On  the  day  of  the  adjournment  of  the  Legislature,  or  there- 
about, a  garbled,  grossly  unfair,  and  untruthful  synopsis  of  the  report 
of  the  Senate  Committee  was  given  to  the  press,  with  the  object  of 
forestalling  public  opinion  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  purpose  your 
committee  has  had  in  view,  viz. :  a  proper  examination  into  the  man- 
ner in  which  the  asylums  of  this  State  are  conducted,  with  the  object 
of  correcting  abuses  which  had  long  been  known  to  exist.  In  reply 
to  this  synopsis,  your  committee  presented  a  "  Provisional  Keport," 
in  which  the  falsehoods  and  other  misstatements  published  were  ex- 
posed, as  explicitly  as  could  be  done  under  the  circumstances.  This 
"  Provisional  Report "  was  widely  circulated  through  the  medical 
and  lay  press.  In  using  this  latter  means  of  publication,  your  com- 
mittee conceives  that  it  has  acted  in  the  way  best  calculated  to  at- 
tain the  object  in  view.  It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  all  reforms 
must  be  brought  about  through  the  operation  of  an  enlightened  pub- 
lic opinion.  The  asylum  interest  will  yield  nothing  unless  forced 
to  do  so  by  a  power  which  it  cannot  resist.  Neither  argument  nor 
entreaty  moves  it.  Hard  blows  are  the  only  logic  it  understands ; 
and  in  a  country  such  as  ours,  in  which  the  people  rule,  it  is 
through  the  will  of  the  people  that  those  ameliorations  to  which  the 
New  York  Neurological  Society  stands  committed  must  ultimately 
be  secured.  Already  the  fruit  begins  to  fall,  and  it  is  not  a  matter 
for  doubt  that  ere  long  the  full  harvest  will  be  gathered. 

Within  a  few  days  the  complete  report  of  the  Senate  Committee 
has  been  published,  after  an  unusual  delay  of  several  months.     It  is 


doubtful  if  it  would  ever  have  seen  the  light  had  not  members  of 
your  committee  in  a  measure  forced  the  publication. 

However  that  may  be,  your  committee  is  now  in  a  position  to 
examine  fully  into  its  pretensions,  and  it  proposes  to  do  so.  In  this 
task  it  will  be  necessary  to  show  to  the  Neurological  Society  and  the 
public  the  unjust,  ex  parte,  and  untruthful  character  of  a  legislative 
document  of  the  great  State  of  New  York,  and  the  unscrupulous 
conduct  of  the  asylum  power.  The  office  is  not  a  pleasant  one,  biit 
your  committee  knows  well  the  individuals  with  whom  it  has  to  deal, 
and  it  will  not  shrink  from  any  portion  of  its  duty.  Happily,  how- 
ever, the  instance  is  an  exceptional  one  ;  for  never  before  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  State  has  partisanship  been  so  evident,  and  the  plainest 
dictates  of  propriety  and  courtesy  been  so  disregarded  to  anything 
like  the  extent  manifested  in  the  paper  which  is  published  to  the 
world  by  a  committee  which  should  have  exhibited  more  of  truth  and 
justice  on  a  question  of  so  much  importance. 

So  extraordinary  is  this  document,  and  so  very  divergent  from 
the  customary  action  of  a  legislative  committee  of  inquiry  is  the  con- 
duct of  its  authors,  that  your  committee  feels  that  neither  is  entitled 
to  the  respectful  consideration  that  would  be  gladly  accorded  to  both. 
Your  committee,  therefore,  desires  to  express  its  regret  at  being  com- 
pelled to  characterize  any  State  paper  in  terms  which  to  many  may 
seem  to  be  out  of  place  and  unnecessarily  severe.  But  the  report  is 
so  recklessly  slanderous,  its  statements  so  glaringly  false,  its  innuen- 
does so  malicious  in  character,  its  quibbling  so  utterly  beneath  the 
dignity  which  Senate  committees  have  heretofore  exhibited,  its  in- 
tention to  crush  out  by  every  unworthy  means  the  rights  of  those 
who,  in  the  interests  of  humanity,  addressed  a  respectful  petition  to 
the  Legislature  is  so  strongly  evident,  its  object  to  impugix  the  mo- 
tives, injure  the  reputations,  and,  by  every  means  at  command,  to 
lessen  the  social  and  professional  standing  of  those  who  had  the  peti- 
tion in  charge  and  who  signed  it  is  so  clearly  apjjarent,  that  your  com- 
mittee feels  no  delicacy  in  referring  to  the  outrage  in  language  which 
will  admit  of  no  misunderstanding.  Gentleness  and  forbearance  are 
qualities  which  these  people  do  not  appreciate.  They  would  be  mis- 
taken for  doubt  and  timidity. 

In  the  first  place,  the  report  endeavors  to  convey  the  idea  that 
the  committee  was  guilty  of  fraud  in  placing  the  names  of  President 
Barnard,  of  Columbia  College,  and  of  Prof.  John  W.  Draper,  of  the 
University  of  New  York,  on  the  petition  without  their  authority — 
in  fact,  of  forging  their  signatures  for  the  purpose  of  giving  in- 


creased  weight  to  the  memorial.  In  the  synopsis  given  last  spring 
to  the  newspaper  press,  and  sent  through  the  agency  of  the  asylum 
interest  to  all  parts  of  the  country,  this  crime  was  enjphatically 
charo'ed.  In  the  present  full  report  it  is  less  distinctly  stated  ;  but, 
nevertheless,  the  inference  will  not  fail  to  be  drawn  by  those  not  con- 
versant with  the  facts,  or  with  the  unscrupulousness  of  a  portion  of 
the  asylum  interest,  that  your  committee  had  appended  the  names  of 
the  gentlemen  in  question  to  the  petition  without  their  authority. 
To  this  charge  your  committee  has  to  offer  the  following  state- 
ment : 

The  petition  was  presented  to  President  Barnard  by  one  of  your 
committee  (Dr.  E.  C.  Seguin).  Dr.  Barnard  took  the  paper,  said  he  had 
not  time  to  read  it  then,  kept  it  three  days  and  then  returned  it,  not 
only  with  his  signature  appended,  but  with  a  letter  in  explanation. 
In  support  of  this  statement  your  committee  submits  Dr.  Seguin's 
affidavit  (Appendix,  Exhibit  A).  Examination  of  the  petition,  if  it 
remains  in  existence,  ^vill  satisfy  any  expert  that  the  signature  is 
President  Barnard's,  a  fact  which,  as  your  committee  understands,  he 
does  not  now  deny. 

Probably  no  circumstance  has  been  more  unjustly  used  than  the 
statements  of  the  committee  relative  to  President  Barnard's  signa- 
ture. Adherents  of  the  asylum  interest  circulated  them  by  means 
of  the  medical  and  secular  press.  Hundreds  of  copies  of  an  Albany 
newspaper,  in  which  the  "  synopsis  "  first  appeared,  were  sent  abroad 
in  this  coxmtry  and  in  Europe,  and  doubtless  had  with  many  the 
eflfect  of  condemning  your  committee  for  what  was  apparently,  at 
least,  a  gross  misuse  of  the  name  of  a  respectable  and  learned  citizen. 

In  regard  to  Prof.  John  W.  Draper,  it  was  never  asserted  by 
your  committee  that  his  name  was  among  the  signatures  to  the  peti- 
tion, and  therefore  the  statement  in  the  report  of  the  Senate  Com- 
mittee that  he  had  not  signed  it,  is,  of  course,  correct.  Messrs. 
Goodwin  and  Goebel  would  doubtless  have  received  negative  replies 
from  many  other  gentlemen  they  might  have  addressed,  and  thus 
have  manufactured  a  still  stronger  temporary  prejudice  against  your 
committee.  But  the  name  of  Dr.  John  W.  Draper's  son,  Prof.  John 
C.  Draper,  is  there,  and  he  signed  it  at  the  request  of  one  of  your 
committee  (Dr.  Hammond)  in  the  faculty  room  of  the  University 
Medical  College,  at  the  same  time  Prof.  Pardee  signed.  That  the 
Senate  Committee  has  quibbled  and  acted  disingenuously  in  this  mat- 
ter, is  sufficiently  apparent  without  further  comment. 

The  idea  is  sought  to  be  conveyed  by  the  Senate  Committeej  that 


many  of  the  signers  of  the  petition  -withdrew  their  names  in  a  par- 
oxysm of  self-excited  virtuous  indignation. 

The  faQt  is  that  the  most  strenuous  arguments  and  entreaties  were 
employed  by  the  agents  of  the  asylum  interest  to  induce  signers  to 
withdraw  their  names,  and  when  these  were  not  efficacious,  threats 
were  made  use  of.  Several  such  cases  have  come  to  our  knowl- 
edge. One  gentleman  (Mr.  David  Dows)  who  signed  the  petition, 
after  a  careful  perusal,  informed  one  of  us  (Dr.  Hammond)  that  he 
had  been  repeatedly  approached  in  the  manner  stated.  To  his  honor, 
be  it  said,  he  steadfastly  resisted  all  influences,  and  his  name  remains 
on  the  petition. 

It  is  true  that  others  were  less  courageous  in  support  of  their  con- 
victions than  Mr.  Dows,  and  there  were  a  few  withdrawals.  Some  of 
these  were  in  consequence  of  the  quasi  threatening  letter  of  the 
committee  (Appendix,  Exhibit  B)  summoning  them  to  Albany,  and 
others,  through  the  efforts  above  mentioned.  For  these  individuals 
your  committee  has  only  pity.  It  is  not  given  to  all  to  be  endowed 
with  sufficient  moral  courage  to  adhere  to  what  they  believe  to  be 
right,  to  have  the  judgment  to  read  what  is  presented  to  them  for 
signature,  or  to  understand  its  bearing  after  a  careful  perusal.  Those 
persons,  therefore,  who  allege  that  they  signed  an  important  petition 
without  reading  it,  or  that,  having  signed  it,  they  did  not  compre- 
hend its  purport,  or  that  they  could  not  possibly  have  signed  any- 
thing against  the  State  Commissioner  in  Lunacy,  for  he  was  their 
bosom  friend,  or  that  having  signed  it  they  found  on  reflection  that 
they  had  no  charges  to  make  against  the  asylums  as  did  the  minister 
(Senate  Report,  p.  2),  or  that  they  had  signed  under  the  representa- 
tions of  another  (p.  2),  or  that  "  he  cannot  be  a  party  to  such  charges, 
as  they  are  entirely  without  his  knowledge  and  belief "  (p.  3),  are 
clearly  entitled  to  the  deep  commiseration  of  the  public.  The  Sen- 
ate Committee  and  the  asylum  interest  are  welcome  to  all  such  con- 
verts. They  will  probably  receive  the  sincere  contempt  of  both  the 
friends  of  asylum  reform  and  their  antagonists. 

The  report  states  that  "  two  physicians  wrote  withdrawing  their 
names.  The  one  asserting  that  he  had  signed  under  misapprehen- 
sion; the  other  that  he  had  signed  no  petition  containing  allega- 
tions of  mal-administration  either  on  the  part  of  superintendents  of 
lunatic  asylums  or  the  Commissioner  of  Lunacy,  and  knew  of  no  facts 
that  would  sustain  such  allegations." 

These  statements  may  be  true,  but  your  committee  hesitates  to 
believe  that  any  medical  gentlemen  who  signed  the  petition   would 


so  stultify"  themselves.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  names  of  these 
physicians  are  not  given.  Yoxir  committee  will  endeavor  to  obtain 
them.  Individuals  under  torture  have  frequently  confessed  to  hav- 
ing perpetrated  crimes  of  which  they  were  not  in  reality  guilty. 
We  shall  see  whether  the  rack  of  the  Senate  Committee  of  Public 
Health  is  more  powerful  than  that  of  three  hundred  years  ago.  It 
is  more  difficult,  probably,  to  get  a  confession  of  imbecility  than  one 
of  criminality. 

In  regard  to  other  portions  of  the  evidence,  as  printed  in  the  re- 
port, your  committee  emphatically  declares  that  it  is  inaccurate,  im- 
perfect, and  garbled. 

Take,  for  example,  the  pai't  where  the  State  Commissioner  in  Lu- 
nacy ostentatiously,  and  doiibtless  according  to  prearrangement,  ques- 
tions Dr.  Nichols  in  regard  to  Dr.  Hammond's  statement  that  a  pa- 
tient in  Bloomingdale  had  died  in  a  crib  (Utica)  soon  after  having 
been  placed  therein.     And  Dr.  Nichols  triumphantly  replies  : 

"  jSTo  such  case  has  occurred  since  the  institution  has  been  under 
my  charge." 

This  all  seems  very  straight,  but  it  is  nevertheless  directly  calcu- 
lated to  deceive.  If  information  was  desired  on  this  point  why  did 
not  Dr.  Ordronaux  question  Dr.  Hammond,  who  had  made  the 
assertion  ?  He  had  pxiblicly  stated  his  willingness  to  give  names, 
and  the  whole  matter  might  easily  have  been  inquired  into  if  any 
real  desire  to  get  at  the  facts  of  the  case  had  existed.  In  the  course 
of  his  examination  by  Mr.  Goodwin,  Dr.  Hammond,  unaware  of 
what  had  taken  place  between  Dr.  Ordronaux  and  Dr.  Nichols, 
brought  this  matter  up  very  unexpectedly  to  his  questioner,  who  at 
once  dropped  the  subject.  The  crib  (Utica)  being  under  discussion, 
Dr.  Hammond  was  asked  : 

"  Q.  Do  you  know  anything  about  the  condition  of  the  patients 
who  were  restrained  ? 

''  A.  No ;  but  I  know  pretty  positively,  as  well  as  I  know  any- 
thing else,  that  a  patient  died  in  a  crib,  in  an  asylum  not  far  from 
New  York  City." 

Here  was  an  opportunity  for  Mr.  Goodwin  to  have  gotten  Dr. 
Hammond's  authority  for  the  statement,  and  to  have  learned  the  his- 
tory from  the  physician  in  whose  practice  the  incident  occurred. 

Although,  as  it  happens,  Dr.  Nichols  was  not  the  Superintendent 
at  the  time  the  event  took  place,  yet,  for  all  that,  it  might  have  hap- 
pened during  his  administration,  and  he  have  been  none  the  wiser ; 
for  when  a  physician  went  to  his  institution,  by  order  of  the  Court, 


8 

to  examine  a  lady,  wlio  it  afterward  was  shown  had  been  confined 
there,  while  sane,  for  about  seven  years,  Dr.  Nichols  did  not  know 
that  any  such  person  was  a  patient  under  his  charge  ! 

Dr.  Nichols  states  that  he  does  not  use  the  crib  at  Bloomingdale. 
Why,  he  does  not  inform  us ;  but  that  it  was  used  there  before  his 
advent  he  will  probably  not  deny.  If  it  is  so  good  a  thing,  as  many 
insane  asylum  superintendents  contend,  and,  as  he  says  it  is,  why 
does  he  not  employ  it  ?  Are  the  insane  to  be  deprived  of  so  bene- 
ficial a  contrivance  as  the  Utica  crib  merely  because  a  few  pestilent 
so-called  reformers  have  denounced  it  ? 

Dr.  Cleaveland,  the  Superintendent  of  the  Poughkeepsie  Asylum, 
testified  (page  17)  that  he  did  not  employ  the  Utica  crib  ;  that  it  was 
a  form  of  restraint  that  should  be  used  cautiously,  and  that  some  pa- 
tients were  seriously  injured  hy  its  use,  although  thinking  it  a  hu- 
mane form  of  resti'aint  for  certain  cases.  Assuredly  an  agent  capa- 
ble of  inflicting  such  damage,  and  which,  as  we  know,  is  often  re- 
sorted to  indiscriminately,  is  entitled  to  all  the  censure  which  has  been 
directed  against  it. 

Among  the  Superintendents  whose  fitness  was  most  distinctly  im- 
peached, was  the  one  then  in  charge  of  the  New  York  City  Asylum, 
on  Blackwell's  Island,  for  women.  Since  the  meeting  of  the  Senate 
Committee,  this  gentleman  has  been  removed  from  his  position  on  the 
ground  of  incapacity ;  not  as  the  result,  be  it  borne  in  mind,  of  any 
inquiry  originated  by  the  Commissioners  of  Charities  and  Correc- 
tion, but  only  after  a  newspaper  reporter  had  ferreted  out  abuses  in 
the  institution,  of  which  the  commissioners  must  have  been  previously 
aware,  but  which,  when  published,  they  did  not  deem  it  prudent  to 
overlook.  Such  a  wholesome  dread  of  public  opinion  should  be 
commended  if  it  were  based  on  an  honest  desire  to  change  a  bad  sys- 
tem. But  as  the  system  remains  unchanged,  and  as  the  last  state  of 
that  asylum  is  worse  than  the  first,  your  committee  can  only  regard 
the  sacrifice  of  Dr.  Strew  as  either  only  a  "  sop  to  Cerberus,"  or  the 
consummation  of  a  plan  to  place  two  asylums  under  the  charge  of  a 
superintendent  who,  exjoerience  shows  us,  is  incapable  of  properly 
managing  one. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  those  of  your  committee  who  went 
to  Albany  were  not  allowed  to  state  anything  but  what  they  knew  of 
their  own  knowledge,  and  that  no  documentary  evidence  was  ad- 
mitted. Is  it  to  be  supposed  for  one  moment  that  if  the  Senate 
Committee,  or  rather  Mr.  Goodwin  (for  Mr.  Goebel,  though  the  chair- 
man,  never  asked  a  question),  wanted  the  truth,  they  would   not 


9 

have  got  information  from  all  sources  ?  Whoever  heard  before  of 
signers  to  a  petition  for  the  reform  of  abuses  being  required  to  ver- 
ify their  statements  by  their  own  knowledge  ?  Your  committee  had 
witnesses  ready  to  prove  all  that  was  alleged,  and  in  order  to  get 
at  the  truth  more  easily,  several  of  the  petitioners  addressed  a  letter 
to  the  Senate  Committee,  requesting  that  the  committee  would  meet 
in  New  York  where  the  witnesses  were ;  but  this  was  peremptorily 
refused. 

The  facts  set  forth  in  the  memorial  were  many  of  them  things 
which  could  only  be  known  to  a  few  persons,  inmates  of  asylums,  and 
which  were  only  known  to  your  committee  through  evidence  which 
had  reached  it,  and  which  would  have  been  adduced  upon  an  inves- 
tigation. Mr.  Goodwin  might  as  well  have  called  upon  us  to  prove, 
by  our  own  knowledge,  the  existence  of  such  a  place  as  Pekin,  or 
that  Alexander  the  Second  is  Czar  of  Russia,  or  that  General  Grant 
has  just  returned  from  a  voyage  round  the  woi'ld.  We  could,  with 
time  and  opportunity,  establish  all  these  points  to  the  satisfaction  of 
any  unprejudiced  person;  but  we  do  not  know  them  of  our  own 
knowledge,  and  that  is  exactly  the  position,  in  reference  to  asylum 
abuses,  in  which  those  of  us  who  were  invited  to  go  to  Albany  were 
placed  by  the  unjustifiable  action  of  the  Committee  on  Public 
Health. 

Nevertheless,  we  did  know  some  things  of  our  own  knowledge, 
and  these  we  testified  to,  vainly  as  it  turned  out,  for  the  committee 
disregarded  all  that  was  said  by  us  and  went  on  to  consummate  their 
prearranged  plan.  For  instance,  Dr.  Hammond  declared  that  he 
knew  of  his  own  knowledge  : 

1st.  That  the  superintendents  are  not  chosen  from  among  physi- 
cians who  have  piirsued  special  studies  in  neurology,  and  he  gave  a 
case  in  point,  that  of  the  Superintendent  of  the  Blackwell's  Island 
Asylum  (page  22),  who  has  since  been  removed  on  the  alleged  ground 
of  incompetency. 

2d.  That  there  were  assistant  physicians  who  were  just  out  of 
the  too  elementary  medical  schools,  and  he  gave  the  instance  of 
Blackwell's  Island,  supporting  his  assertion  by  the  Report  of  the 
Board  of  State  Charities,  to  the  effect  that  there  had  been  eighteen 
assistants  in  that  institution  within  two  years  (page  23). 

3d.  That  he  knew  of  insane  asylums,  within  the  State,  that  did 
not  possess  the  proper  instruments  for  making  examinations  of  their 
inmates  and  for  treating  them  (page  23). 

4th,  That  he  knew  that  the  medical'  officers  of  asylums  were  over- 


10 

I 

worked  and  wretcliedly  paid,  while  some  were  not  paid  at  all  (pages 
23  and  24). 

•  5th.  That  he  gave  his  reasons  for  believing  that  the  superinten- 
dents and  their  assistants  are,  with  scarcely  an  exception,  not  skilled 
in  the  modern  methods  of  diagnosis  or  of  post-mortem  examinations 
(page  25). 

6th.  That  he  knew  the  pathological  work  done  at  the  asylums 
was  of  little  value  (page  26). 

7th.  That  he  knew  that  undergraduates  acted  as  assistant  physi- 
cians, in  which  Mr.  Goodwin  was  kind  enough  to  confirm  him  (page 
26). 

8th.  That  he  knew,  of  his  own  knowledge,  that  patients  were  for- 
cibly fed  by  nurses  and  attendants  without  a  physician  being  present, 
and  he  gave  the  case  of  a  lady  he  had  personally  examined,  and  the 
roof  of  whose  mouth  had  been  torn  out  by  the  instruments  used  (page 
27.     Also  Appendix,  Exhibit  C). 

9th.  That  he  knew,  of  his  own  knowledge,  that  the  Superintendent 
was  not  consulted  when  restraint  Avas  employed,  but  that  nurses, 
at  their  will,  applied  it  (Appendix,  Exhibit  C). 

10th.  That  he  knew,  of  his  own  knowledge,  that  the  barbarous 
and  inhuman  means  of  restraint,  known  as  the  crib  (Utica),  was  em- 
ployed in  a  number  of  institutions. 

11th.  That  the  law  requiring  the  State  Commissioner  in  Lunacy 
to  be  an  experienced  physician  was  disregarded,  the  present  official 
never  having  been  a  practising  physician. 

These  things  were  of  themselves  sufficient  to  authorize  an  inves- 
tigation, but  they  were,  as  the  exhibits  appended  will  show,  by  no 
means  a  large  proportion  of  what  we  had  to  allege. 

Before  proceeding  directly  to  these,  we  propose  to  exhibit  the 
true  character  of  some  of  the  other  manoeuvres  resorted  to  by  the 
Senate  Committee  on  Public  Health. 

The  language  of  the  Senate  Committee,  when  speaking  of  the 
Society  in  which  your  petition  had  its  oi'igin,  is  unwarrantably  and 
designedly  contemptuous.  It  is  calculated  to  mislead  the  lay  readers 
into  believing  that  the  New  York  Neurological  Society  has  either  no, 
or  at  best  a  very  problematical,  existence.  It  would  be  superfluous 
to  contradict  this  to  our  medical  readers,  who  are  familiar  with  the 
record  of  this  body  ;  with  others  it  may  suffice  to  state  that  the  New 
York  Neurological  Society  is  a  well-known  and  regular  medical  as- 
sociation. 

That  many  signers  of  the  petition  withdrew  their  names  simply, 


11 

or  declined  to  go  to  Albany  as  having  no  personal  knowledge  of  asy- 
lums, nay  even  resorted  to  evasion  to  avoid  what  they  had  every 
reason  to  consider  a  threatening  summons,  will  not  appear  remark- 
able to  those  familiar  with  the  operations  of  the  human  mind. 

That  any  of  the  signers  at  all  went  under  the  summons  referred 
to  is  to  be  wondered  at ;  from  the  manner  in  which  the  few  who 
went  were  treated  while  at  Albany,  it  follows  that  those  who  refused 
to  go  had  the  best  excuse  a  posteriori  that  they  could  have  desired  for 
declining  to  appear  in  person. 

The  statement  that  signatures  to  the  petition  were  obtained  under 
misapprehension,  and  by  the  surreptitious  affixture  of  names,  appears 
on  its  face  so  absurd  that  we  might  well  afford  to  treat  such  assevera- 
tion with  the  silent  contempt  it  merits.  It  rests  on  the  sole  and  ir- 
responsible assertion  of  a  superintendent  between  whom  and  mem- 
bers of  the  Committee  on  Asylum  Abuses,  of  the  New  York  Neuro- 
logical Society,  matters  have  come  to  an  issue  as  to  veracity  on  other 
occasions  to  be  specified  (Exhibits  D,  E,  F,  N,  O,  P,  Q,  X,  and  AA). 

It  is  significant  that  the  names  of  those  signers  who  are  alleged 
to  have  signed  the  petition  under  the  mistaken  idea  that  it  referred 
to  local  improvements  are  not  mentioned  anywhere  throughout  the 
report.  The  matter  of  Mr.  Browning,  who  is  represented  to  have, 
with  the  employees  in  his  establishment,  signed  the  petition  under  the 
idea  that  it  was  a  certificate  of  good  character  for  one  of  his  former 
clerks,  is  sufficiently  met  by  the  subjoined  documentary  evidence 
(Appendix,  Exhibits  D  and  E).  it  may,  in  this  connrction,  be  well 
to  refer  to  the  fact  that  the  letter  of  Mr.  Browning,  whom  a  super- 
intendent alleges  to  have  made  the  above  statement,  is  not  published. 

It  is  also  false  that,  as  Dr.  A.  E.  Macdonald  asserted,  and  the 
^Senate  Committee  repeats,  signatures  were  obtained  from  members 
of  the  New  York  Club  in  such  a  way  as  to  induce  the  signers  to  be- 
lieve that  they  were  signing  a  club  paper.  An  affidavit  from  Dr. 
T.  A.   McBride  (Exhibit  AA)  disposes  of  that  matter. 

Equally  decisive  is  the  letter  of  Dr.  Landon  Carter  Gray,  of 
Brooklyn,  to  the  effect  that  the  statement  of  the  Senate  Committee 
that  only  one  Brooklyn  physician  had  signed  the  petition  is  false. 
Over  a  dozen  of  the  best  known  physicians  of  that  city  signed 
(Exhibit  W). 

If  the  Senate  Committee  says  true  when  (page  3,  S.  C.  Rep.)  it 
states  "  another  requests  the  withdrawal  of  his  name,  saying  that 
some  months  before  he  had  signed  a  petition  which  he  believed  to 
favor  a  new  street  railway  on  Broadway,  but  which  he  now  believes 


.     12 

was  to  be  directed  against  the  management  of  insane  asylums  of  the 
State,"  then  this  Senate  Committee  has  not  only  succeeded  in  find- 
ing fitting  tools  for  its  very  questionable  piece  of  work,  but  also  dis- 
covered some  additional  subjects  for  asylum  treatment,  whose  mani- 
fest imbecility  some  member  of  the  Committee  on  Asylum  Abuses 
must  have  failed  to  recognize  while  obtaining  signatures.  Your  com- 
mittee, however,  is  unwilling  to  believe  that  any  of  the  signers  could 
have  actually  made  such  an  exhibition  of  themselves,  and  is  strength- 
ened in  this  conviction  by  the  fact  that  no  names  are  mentioned  by 
the  Senate  Committee. 

It  is  not  true  that  any  signatures  were  obtained  under  misappre- 
hension. The  Senate  Committee  resorted  to  the  questionable  strategy 
of  citing  signers  before  them  in  such  terms  as  to  convince  the  latter 
that  they  had  individually  made  charges  against  asylums.  Many  not 
having  a  copy  of  the  petition  to  refer  to,  were  consequently  induced 
to  write  the  Senate  Committee,  stating  that  they  had  not  any  per- 
sonal knowledge,  nor  had  made  charges  against  asylums,  and  that 
there  must  have  been  a  very  grave  misapprehension  somewhere.  These 
answers  naturally  followed  a  citation  of  so  misleading  a  character, 
and  clearly  were  designed  so  to  follow  hy  the  Senate  Committee  maJc- 
ing  the  citation. 

The  Senate  Committee  then  go  on  to  say  that  "the  general  as- 
sertions of  the  petition  are  not  stibstantiated  by  facts."  This,  like 
numerous  other  statements,  and  most  of  the  so-called  conclusions  of 
the  Senate  Committee,  is  a  qiiibble,  for  the  Senate  Committee  does 
not  and  could  not  deny  that  many  specific  allegations  were  proven, 
even  in  the  course  of  the  brief  and  garbling  procedure  instituted  by 
the  committee  under  the  name  of  an  examination. 

It  is  admitted  by  the  parties  appearing  before  the  Senate  Commit- 
tee, either  as  asylum  representatives,  or  for  the  purpose  of  crushing 
investigation  : 

1st.  That  the  Commissioner  in  Lunacy  does  not  go  through  the 
asylum  wards  unattended  by  some  member  of  the  asylum  medical 
staff  (page  10,  lines  19-27,  S.  C.  Rep.). 

2d.  That  the  Commissioner  in  Lunacy  does  not  make  night  visits 
in  order  to  satisfy  himself  as  to  the  condition  of  the  asylum  inmates 
at  night. 

3d.  That  the  Commissioner  in  Lunacy  often  gives  the  superin- 
tendents notice  of  his  coming  to  visit  their  asylums  (page  18,  line  2, 
also  bottom). 

4th.  That  a  superintendent  has  been  appointed  in  direct  violation 


13 

of  the  law,  which  requires  that  the  superintendent  shall  have  had 
hospital  experience,  and  that  this  took  placp  during  the  term  of 
office  of  the  present  Comraissioner  in  Lunacy  (page  17,  line  32). 

5th.  That  the  Commissioner  in  Lunacy,  althovigh  appointed  to  ex- 
ercise supervision  over  all  asylams  in  the  State,  seems  to  disclaim 
having  any  control  over  county  or  private  asylums  by  the  language 
of  his  testimony ;  which  is  in  conflict  with  the  law  under  which  he 
acts  (page  9,  line  38,  S.  C.  Rep.). 

6th.  That  asylum  medical  officers  are  overworked  (page  13,  line 
24,  S.  C.  Rep.). 

7tli.  That  the  crib  is  an  unnecessary  means  of  mechanical  restraint, 
since  the  Poughkeepsie,  Willard,  and  Bloomingdale  Asylums,  al- 
though treating  as  many,  if  not  more  acute  and  violent  cases  of  in- 
sanity than  are  treated  at  Utica  and  Ward's  Island,  do  not  permit 
its  use. 

8th.  That  the  crib  is  an  injurious  appliance  and  its  use  coupled 
with  risk  to  the  patient  (page  17,  bottom). 

9th.  That  undergraduates  in  medicine  have  been  employed  to  per- 
form medical  duties  at  our  State  Asylums  (page  17,  line  8,  Ibid.), 

As  far  as  the  fact  on  which  the  Senate  Committee  mainly  bases 
its  deprecation  of  the  petition,  namely,  that  some  of  the  petition- 
ers had  not  been  inside  the  walls  of  certain  State  Asylums  for  sev- 
eral years,  goes,  it  amounts  to  absolutely  nothing. 

It  is  proof  of  the  bad  judgment,  if  not  the  bias  of  the  commit- 
tee, that  they  fail  or  refuse  to  recognize  that  allegations  of  misman- 
agement, must  be  based  on  something  stronger  than  mere  individual 
assertion  and  inspection.  That  stronger  and  documentary  evidence 
submitted  was  excluded  (page  42,  line  40,'  S.  C.  Rep.).- 

A  part  of  this  documentary  evidence  thus  excluded,  is  herewith 
submitted,  and  the  reader  may  judge  for  himself  whether  the  New 
York  Neurological  Society  was  justified  in  its  petition  or  not. 

The  "  conclusions  "  of  the  Senate  Committee  are  absurd  logically 
and  unsustained  by  facts. 

The  first  "  conclusion "  is  sufficiently  characterized  by  the  fact 
that  it  rests  on  a  few  lines  from  a  Governor's  Message. 

'  The  testimony  is  not  accurately  given.  Dr.  Spitzka  stated  :  "If  this 
committee  permits  the  presentation  of  documents  or  documentary  evidence, 
I  have  them  in  this  satchel,"  to  vrhich  Mr.  Goodwin  replied,  as  reported 
with  characteristic  relevancy,  "  Then  our  committee  would  be  as  long  in 
making  a  report,  as  it  would  take  you  to  tell  what  a  competent  physician 
is." 


14 

Tlieir  second  allegation,  that  in  view  of  the  existence  of  a  State 
Board  of  Charities, .  which  has  never  suggested  any  such  defects  as 
those  intimated  to  exist,  an  investigation  was  unnecessary,  is  met  by 
two  facts  :  First,  that  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  shortly  after 
the  examination  by  the  Senate  Committee,  asked  the  Legislature  for 
full  power  to  investigate.  This  request,  for  which  there  must  have 
been  a  reason,  was  refused  by  the  State  Legislature.  Second,  that 
the  most  prominent  of  the  local  visiting  committees '  have  instruc- 
tions to  refrain  from  any  criticisms  on  the  rnedical  management  of 
asylums.  Now  it  was  precisely  to  defects  in  the  medical  manage- 
ment that  our  petition  referred. 

The  third  conclusion  falls  to  the  ground,  inasmuch  as  it  is  based 
on  the  assertions  of  the  State  Commissioner  in  Lunacy,  an  officer 
who  has  more  reason  to  dread  an  investigation  of  the  asylums  in 
this  State,  than  most  of  the  superintendents  themselves. 

To  exhibit  the  full  value  of  the  fourth  so-called  conclusion,  we 
subjoin  it  in  the  full  and  original  text,  it  requires  no  further  com- 
ment : 

^^  Fourth. — The  insinuation  of  the  petition  that  the  superintend- 
ents of  these  State  asylums  are  not  thoroughly  trained  and  thorough- 
ly competent  medical  men,  is  too  notoriously  untrue  to  require 
denial," 

The  fifth  "  conclusion  "  consists  of  no  less  than  three  distinct  and 
demonstrable  misstatements.  It  is  first  stated  that  "  no  undei'gradu- 
ates  in  medicine  have  been  appointed  as  assistant  physicians  in  State 
Asylums,"  If  for  the  quibbling  phrase  "  been  appointed  "  we  sub- 
stitute "  served,"  and  turn  to  page  17  of  the  Senate  Committee's 
Report,  we  find  that  the  Siiperintendent  of  the  Middletown  Asylum 
confesses  to  having  a  student  of  medicine  employed  to  make  the 
gynecological  examinations,  among  the  most  delicate  manipulations 
in  practice  !  !  It  is  also  false  that,  as  stated,  only  one  person  ever  oc- 
cupied an  assistantship  in  county  asylums  while  an  undergraduate. 
This  statement  seems  to  rest  on  the  allegation  of  the  Superintendent 
of  the  Ward's  Island  Asylum,  was  stigmatized  at  Albany  as  a  "down- 
right falsehood"  on  the  personal  i-esponsibility  of  one  of  your  com- 
mittee (page  41,  S.  C.  Rep.),  and  is  proven  to  be  such  by  the  sub- 
joined letter  from  the  Commissioners  of  Charities  and  Correction 
(Appendix,  Exhibit  F)  of  the  City  of  New  York. 

The  third  falsehood  the  Senate  Committee  is  itself  responsible  for. 

'  Those  of  the  Ward's  and  Blackwell's  Island  Asylums. 


15 

Nowhere  throughout  their  report  can  the  reader  find  the  slightest 
evidence  that  any  of  the  four  petitioners  appearing  at  Albany  ad- 
mitted that  the  charge  that  undergraduates  in  medicine  served  as 
physicians  in  asylums  of  this  State,  "  was  a  reckless  misrepresenta- 
tion." The  instances  given  in  the  Appendix  show  how  well  founded 
that  charge  was.  The  phrase  "  reckless  misrepresentation,"  applies 
with  gi-eater  propriety  to  the  so-called  conclusions  of  Messrs.  Good- 
win and  Goebel. 

The  seventh  conclusion,  stating  that  the  accusations  made  against 
the  pathological  work  carried  on  at  the  Utica  Asylum  are  suflficiently 
met  by  a  letter  from  Dr.  J.  C.  I)alton,  of  New  York,  is  about  as  logi- 
cal as  if  the  accusations  made  by  a  committee  of  chemists,  against  a 
certain  chemical  laboratory,  were  to  be  considered  as  disproved  by  a 
letter  of  endorsement  from  a  geologist.  Dr.  Dalton  is  a  distinguish- 
ed physiologist,  it  is  trvie,  but,  so  far  as  your  committee  knows,  has 
never  claimed  to  be,  nor  was  he  ever  considered  to  be,  a  pathological 
expert.  His  endorsement  is  a  mere  opinion  unsupported  by  any  facts 
or  sj)ecific  disproval  of  the  grave  charges  made,  and  your  committee 
has  proof  that  the  doctor  was  not  acquainted  with  the  published  pa- 
thological results  of  the  Utica  Asylum  at  the  time  when  he  wrote 
his  letter  of  endorsement.  In  justice  to  itself,  the  committee 
of  the  New  York  Neurological  Society  feels  called  on  to  declare 
(however  much  it  regrets  the  necessity  of  so  doing)  that  the  endorse- 
ment in  question  is  absolutely  without  bearing  on  the  subject  at  issue. 

The  mere  manufacture  of  large  brain-sections  which  has  deceived 
others  into  a  quasi  endorsement  of  the  Utica  laboratory,  does  not 
prove  the  one  manufacturing  them  to  be  a  skilled  pathologist,  or  even 
a  scientific  investigator.  No  more  this  in  fact,  than  the  preparation 
of  a  finely-mounted  skeleton  shows  the  mechanic  mounting  it  to  be 
a  scientific  anatomist. 

The  so-called  pathological  work  done  at  Utica,  stands  or  falls 
with  its  published  results.  These  wei-e  condemned  as  trivial,  crude, 
and  misleading,  and  not  a  single  physiological,  pathological,  or  thera- 
peutical result  has  been  achieved  at  the  Utica  Asylum  since  the  es- 
tablishment of  its  laboratory  at  such  enormous  cost,  which  is  tangi- 
bly accessible  to  the  medical  profession  (Appendix,  Exhibits  G,  and 
H). 

Such  results  as  have  been  published,  are  criticised  on  the  strength 
of  their  microphotographic  exhibits,  as  showing  absolutely  no  rela- 
tion to  insanity,  and  this  by  one  whose  special  field  is  the  pathology 
of  nervous  and  mental  diseases.     A  judgment  like  this  outweighs  a 


16 

hundredfold  the  letter  and  extract  published  by  the  Senate  Com- 
mittee in  defence  of  the  fragmentary  work  done  at  Utica  (Exhibit  J). 

It  is  certainly  very  suspicious  that  the  representatives  of  the 
Utica  Asylum,  in  their  eager  search  for  any  available  endorsement, 
failed  to  obtain  such  endorsement  from  a  single  pathological  expert. 
It  is  also  remarkable,  suggestively  so  in  fact,  that  these  same  repre- 
sentatives have  been  silent  regarding  the  charges  made  against  the 
Utica  work  by  a  member  of  the  New  York  Neurological  Society,  and 
published  in  a  journal  of  high  scientific  repute — charges  that  were 
repeated  in  a  second  article  in  the  shape  of  a  direct  challenge  to  the 
Association  of  Amei'ican  Superintendents  of  Insane  Asylums,  Those 
charges  were  either  demonstrably  true  or  demonstrably  false,  and 
could  have  been  put  to  a  crucial  test  by  any  one  who  considered  it 
safe  to  risk  such  a  test.  But  in  this,  as  in  every  other  instance,  the 
advocates  of  our  defective  asylum  system  have  found  it  safer  to  re- 
move the  discussion  of  a  strictly  scientific  subject  from  medical  to  lay 
circles.  They  have  succeeded  in  obtaining  an  endorsement  of  such 
a  character  as  to  blind  the  eyes  of  laymen,  perhaps,  but  not  of  a  sin- 
gle competent  judge. 

The  attempt  was  made  by  the  Senator  examining  one  of  your 
committee,  to  hint  that  the  charges  against  the  work  done  at  Utica 
were  not  answered  because  they  were  not  worth  answering.  This 
would  appear  sufficiently  ridiculous  if  the  charges  had  been  sup- 
ported by  nothing  more  than  the  endorsement;  of  the  tfournal  of 
Mental  and  Nervous  Diseases,  published  in  this  cotintiy,  the  JTournal 
of  Mental  Science  in  England  (Exhibit  K),  and  the  statements  of 
Professor  Westphal  of  Berlin.  But  it  is  shown  to  be  utterly  without 
basis,  by  the  fact  that  when  a  member  of  this  Society  offered  to  read 
a  paper  before  the  New  York  Medico-Legal  Society,  on  the  asylum 
question,  and  gave  fair  notice  to  the  Superintendents  of  the  Ward's 
Island  and  Utica  Asylums  (among  others)  of  his  intention  to  criticise 
the  asylum  management  in  this  State,  these  superintendents  made 
persistent  attempts  to  suppress  the  i-eading  of  this  papei".  It  was 
read,  however,'  and  one  of  these  same  siiperintendents  was  present, 
and  as  on  a  similar  occasion  in  the  history  of  the  New  York  Neuro- 
logical Society  (when  repeatedly  called  on  to  speak  by  the  presiding 
officer)  had  not  a  word  to  say  in  defence  of  the  impeached  sj^stem. 


'  "  Real  Asylum  Abuses,"  read  before  the  New  York  Medico-Legal  Society, 
March  3,  1878,  not  published  except  in  the  daily  papers,  the  Evening  Mail  of 
March  14th  and  15th  having  it  in  full. 


If 

The  second  endorsement  of  the  work  done  at  the  Utica  Asylum 
consists  in  an  extract  from  Dr.  Biicknill's  work.  Dr.  Bucknill  was 
admitted,  by  two  of  the  witnesses  present  at  Albany,  to  be  a  promi- 
nent and  practical  alienist,  but  his  pathological  opinions  were,  at  the 
same  time,  stated  to  possess  no  intrinsic  value,  and  we  question 
whether  he  would  have  made  a  commendatory  statement  if  he  could 
have  anticipated  that  it  was  destined  to  constitute  the  sole  support 
from  a  psychiatrical  point  of  view,  of  the  Utica  work,  against  delib- 
erate and  well-founded  scientific  criticism.  Your  committee  holds 
that  Dr.  Bucknill  was  deceived  by  appearances,  as  others  have  been 
since  his  time. 

But  since  the  Senate  Committee  quote  Dr.  Bucknill  thus  tri- 
umphantly in  the  support  of  the  Superintendent  of  the  Utica  Asy- 
lum, it  may  be  well  to  quote  other  passages  from  the  same  author, 
referring  to  subjects  regarding  which  he  is  universally  admitted  to 
be  a  better  judge  than  he  seems  to  be  in  pathological  matters.  These 
passages  (Exhibits  L  and  M)  exhibiting  the  defects  of  our  asylum 
system  in  the  entire  State,  the  deception  which  was  practised  on  Dr. 
Bucknill  by  the  Superintendent  of  the  Utica  A  sylum  with  regard  to 
restraint,  and  the  discreditable  condition  of  the  city  asylums  of  the 
metropolis  of  this  country,  more  than  justify  in  themselves  the  lan- 
guage and  pertinency  of  the  petition,  sneered  at  by  the  Senate 
Committee. 

Now  as  to  the  manner  of  proceeding  adopted  by  the  Senate  Com- 
mittee, a  few  words  may  not  be  out  of  place  at  this  point.  Taking 
the  Senate  Committee's  Report  as  a  whole,  and  as  it  stands,  it  will 
strike  every- experienced  and  reflecting  reader  as  a  "bogus"  Report. 
The  following  is  evident  from  a  mere  perusal  of  this  Report : 

1st.  That  it  was  not  the  intention  of  this  Senate  Committee  to  hear 
the  real  facts  of  the  case.  2d.  That  it  was  their  deliberate  intent  to  ex^ 
elude  all  testimony  in  i-elationto  the  fundamental  points  of  the  petition, 
and  to  narrov/  down  the  exhibition  of  evidence  to  the  personal  quarrels,, 
or  collisions,  which  were  alleged  (Exhibit  N)  to  have  taken  place  be- 
tween the  petitionei's  and  the  superintendents.'  3d.  That  most  of  the 
witnesses  were  examined  precisely  on  those  points,  which  any  prompt- 


'  "While  the  Committee  of  the  New  York  Neurological  Society  considers  it 
entirely  foreign  to  the  subject  at  issue  whether  or  no  one  or  more  of  its  mem- 
bers have  had  personal  differences  with  superintendents,  it  would  call  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  such  differences  have  occurred  after,  not  before,  the  agita- 
tion of  the  subject  of  asylum  reform. 

2 


u 

ing  of  the  Senate  Committee  would  have  informed  them  those  witnesses 
were  least  acquainted  with,  while  they  carefully  avoided  examining 
them  on  those  subjects  with  which  they  were  supposed  to  be  reasonably 
familiar.  4th.  That  the  examination  of  the  petitioners  was  cari-ied  on 
in  a  quibbling  manner,  such  as  characterized  the  cross-examination  of 
witnesses  by  certain  persons  popularly  known  as  pettifoggers  in  our 
police  courts,  when  these  were  at  their  worst.  For  specimens  of  unwar- 
rantable and  ungentlemanly  language,  we  refer  to  the  bottom  of  page 
43,  Sen.  Com.  Rep.  ;  for  irrelevant  questions,  to  page  44,  line  27  ;  for 
questions  based  on  false  assumptions,  to  page  33,  lines  23  and  31  ;  also 
to  page  27,  line  10.  Regarding  the  assumptions  on  which  the  latter 
questions  were  founded,  a  letter  (Exhibit  0)  from  the  superintendent, 
whose  verbal  testimony  was  unhesitatingly  accepted  by  the  Senate  Com- 
mittee as  a  basis  for  such  assumption,  is  herewith  appended.  This  sin- 
gle document  shows  that  the  threats  made  against  those  signing  the 
petition  were  not  empty  threats,  and  it  also  shows  that  the  charge 
which  this  superintendent  made  against  one  of  your  committee,  namely, 
that  the  latter  had  represented  the  petition  as  serving  low,  personal 
ends,  this  superintendent  could  not  have  had  any  grounds  for  believ- 
ing to  be  true  when  he  made  it.  5th.  It  is  evident  that  unimpeacha- 
ble documentary  evidence  was  excluded^  although  freely  used  against 
the  petitioners.  6th.  That  recourse  was  had  to  trickery  (not  to  use  a 
stronger  term)  in  presenting  a  so-called  "  anonymous  letter  from  Dr. 
Kiernan,"  not  as  every  right-thinking  person  would  assume  on  the 
occasion  when  Dr.  Kiernan  was  examined  (Exhibit  P),  but  when 
Dr.  Morton  was.  This  document,  which  Dr.  Kiernan  does  not  hesi- 
tate to  state,  whether  fabricated  or  not  by  the  persons  exhibiting  it, 
was  the  basis  of  groundless  assumption,  was  never  shown  him,  nay, 
was  not  even  mentioned  on  the  occasion  of  his  examination. 
Doubtless,  the  Senate  Committee  anticipated  that  in  this  case  its 
bogus  character  might  have  been  exposed.  This  document  was  not 
exhibited  to  any  member  of  your  committee,  or  to  any  one,  while 
members  of  your  committee  were  being  examined.  We  refer  to  an 
affidavit  (Exhibit  Q)  of  Dr.  Morton's  to  prove  this,  and  to  illustrate 
a  procedure  of  the  Senate  Committee,  which  it  would  be  difficult  to 
characterize. 

Instead  of  first  calling  for  evidence  from  the  petitioners,  in  order 
to  see  what  grounds  existed  for  investigating  the  subject  of  asylum 
management  in  this  State,  the  Senate  Committee  called  on  the  trus- 
tees and  superintendents  of  asylums,  and  the  Commissioner  of  Lu- 
nacy.    That  thus  they  collected  some  of  the  material  for  the  cross- 


i§ 

examination  of  the  petitioners  which  followed,  and  also  learned  what 
questions  it  would  be  wise  to  avoid  asking,  is  evident. 

At  this  stage  of  the  so-called  investigation  another  disingenuous  act 
of  the  Senate  Committee  is  manifested.  On  the  first  day,  when  the 
superintendents,  trustees,  and  managers  of  asykims  were  "  examined," 
"  Chairman "  Goebel  is  represented  as  stating  that  some  thirty  or 
forty  petitioners  had  been  called  on  to  appear;  he  is  then  represented 
as  saying :  "  If  there  are  any  persons  here  who  wish  to  appear,  we  are 
ready  to  hear  them." 

"  No  one  rising,  Senator  Goodwin  said,  etc. :  "  This  makes  it  ap- 
pear as  if  the  prominent  signers  of  the  petition  had  been  summoned 
to  come,  but  had  either  refused  or  been  afraid  to  do  so,"  Your 
committee  has  been  unable  to  discover  a  single  petitioner  who  was 
invited  to  appear  on  the  6th,  and  looks  upon  this  part  of  the  report 
as  a  designed  misrepresentation. 

Even  the  President  of  the  Board  of  Managers  of  the  Utica  Asylum, 
Mr.  Campbell,  although  certainly  not  prejudiced  in  favor  o(  the  peti- 
tioners, could  not  refrain  from  remarking  that  the  examination  of 
the  asylum  representatives  before  the  petitioners  were  summoned 
was  improper  and  premature.  In  saying  this  he  must  have  had  some 
grounds  for  believing  that  the  petitioners  had  not  been  yet  asked  to 
appear. 

The  first  party  examined  at  any  length  is  the  Commissioner  in 
Lunacy,  who  argues  quite  elaborately  against  the  necessity  of  an  in- 
vestigation.    He  opens  as  follows : 

"  It  seems  unnecessary  to  say,  at  the  outset,  that  when  a  petition  is 
presented  to  a  law-making  body,  asking  for  relief,  it  should  state  some 
grievance  for  which  there  is  no  existing  remedy,  either  under  the  com- 
mon or  the  statute  law  of  the  State.  So  long,  therefore,  as  laws  can 
he  formed  to  redress  alleged  wrongs,  there  is  no  proper  ground  upon 
which  the  Legislature  can  intervene  "  '  (page  7,  Sen.  Com.  Rep.), 

Against  this  we  submit  that  it  is  precisely  because  there  are  no 
effective  remedies  against  abuse,  in  other  words,  that  the  State 
Board  of  Charities  has  not  the  power,  and  the  Commissioner  of 
Lunacy  neither  the  will,  the  ability,  nor  the  power  to  redress 
wrongs,  that  the  Committee  on  Asylum  Abuses  of  the  New  York 
Neurological  Society  based  its  complaint  (Exhibits  E,  and  S). 

And  it  is  precisely  because  laws  can  he  formed  to  redress  alleged 
wrongs  that  the  same  committee  appealed  to  the  Senate  in  order  to 

'  Italics  our  own. 


20 

procure  an  investigation  which  might  not  only  test  the  truth  of  the 
allegations  of  said  petition,  but  also  suggest  legal  safety-guards  against 
the  occurrences  of  abuse  complained  of  in  the  same. 

Again  (page  8,  Sen.  Com.  Rep.),  the  Commissioner  in  Lunacy  states 
the  annual  asylum  reports  to  be  j97'ima  facie  evidence  of  their  work- 
ings. This  statement  is  as  lucid  and  correct  as  most  other  state- 
ments of  this  official  (Exhibits  T  and  TJ).  Suppose  that  a  defaulting 
bank  cashier  were  to  assert  that  his  garbled  and  falsified  accounts 
were  prima  facie  evidence  of  the  workings  of  the  bank,  and  rendered 
an  investigation  of  the  safe-contents  superfluous,  what  would  the  de- 
positors say  ?  This  Commissioner  in  Lunacy,  who  has  neglected  the 
duties  of  his  office  to  an  almost  criminal  degree,  has  every  reason  to 
rest  satisfied  with  the  present  defective  and  irresponsible  state  of 
things.  It  is  a  question,  however,  whether  the  citizens  of  this  State 
propose  to  endure  it  much  longer ! 

As  regards  the  statement  of  the  commissioner,  that  the  language 
of  the  petition  is  "  indefinite,  diffuse,  and  repetitious,"  we  will  con- 
tent ourselves  with  referring  the  reader  to  the  petition  on  the  one 
hand,  as  well  as  to  some  specimens  of  the  definite,  non-difi"use,  and 
non-"  repetitious  "  language  employed  by  the  Commissioner  in  Lunacy 
in  his  official  documents  on  the  other  (Exhibit  T). 

The  commissioner  next  objects  to  the  statement  of  your  com- 
mittee that  asylums  are  more  or  less  secluded  from  public  scrutiny. 
He  refers  to  the  number  of  visitors  shown  through  tlie  asylums  of 
this  State  in  rebuttal.  Without  dilating  on  the  notorious  fact  that 
these  visitors  pass  through  a  few  "  show  "  wards  in  a  hurried  man- 
ner, and  that  relatives,  if  permitted  to  see  a  violent  patient  (which 
is  rarely  the  case),  do  not  see  him  in  his  ward  but  in  some  other 
room,  we  shall  content  ourselves  with  proposing  the  following  prob- 
lem to  the  impartial  reader : 

If  asylums  can  he  so  rigidly  secluded  from  the  scrutiny  of  the 
Commissioner  in  Lunacy,  an  officer  endowed  vnth  full  power  to  ex- 
amine every  part  of  every  asylum,  that  he  fails  to  discover  under- 
ground cells  v^orthy  of  the  worst  days  of  bedlam  in  one  (Exhibit  R), 
of  vermin  svxirTning  through  the  wards,  and  pistol  halls  in  the  bodies 
of  patients,  fired  into  them  by  the  3fedical  Superintendent,  in  another 
(Exhibit  S),  and  of  undergraduate  physicians  in  a  third  (Exhibit 
F),  how  rigidly  can  their  worst  features  be  concealed  from  the  scruti- 
ny of  the  casual  visitor'  P 

With  this  question  we  can  afford  to  leave  that  subject. 

The  qommissioner  next  resorts  to  the  same  quibble  already  utilized 


21 

by  the  Senate  Committee  in  disposing  of  the  question  of  restraint 
records.  He  asserts  that  such  records  are  kept  in  all  Slate  asylums. 
He  well  knew  that  this  statement  would  have  been  false  if  made 
with  regard  to  all  asylums  of  the  State,  to  which  the  petition  dis- 
tinctly referred.  The  records  of  his  own  ofl&cial  investigation  of  the 
Bloomingdale  Asylum  showed  that  in  at  least  one — and  that  the 
largest  private  asylum — no  such  records  were  kept.  Your  committee 
questions  whether  such  records  were  kept  in  all  the  State  asylums 
even,  before  the  agitation  of  the  subject. 

Another  statement  of  the  commissioner  (page  10),  relating  to 
night  visits,  is  simply  laughable.  It  shows  his  unwillingness  to  per- 
form his  duty,  or  his  inability  to  carry  it  out  properly — perhaps 
both.  At  all  events,  this  statement  contains  one  of  the  few  direct 
answers  to  the  questions  of  our  petition.  It  shows,  beyond  the  pos- 
sibility of  quibbling,  that  the  commissioner  never  attempted  to 
make  night  visits  in  our  State  asylums,  as  far  as  his  recollection 
goes,  and  does  not  at  present  make  night  visits  in  any  asylum  of 
the  State.  In  England  and  Scotland  night  visits  are  made,  with  the 
best  results  as  regards  management,  and  not  a  single  bad  result  as 
regards  the  patients. 

In  reply  to  the  question  on  the  same  page,  as  to  his  medical 
abilities,  the  Commissioner  in  Lunacy  evades  the  issue  by  leaving 
the  matter  with  the  Governor  who  appointed  and  the  Senate  which 
confii-med  him. 

Among  the  statements  made  by  the  Superintendents,  in  rebuttal 
of  the  allegations  of  the  petition,  we  find  a  very  characteristic  one 
on  page  13  (Sen.  Com.  Rep.).  Here  Dr.  Nichols  states  that  the 
superintendents  of  the  State  of  New  York  are  ajt  least  as  good  as 
those  of  any  other  State.  Now,  your  committee  precisely  holds  that 
the  entire  average  of  American  asylum  superintendents  is,  scientifi- 
cally speaking,  a  low  one.  We  limited  our  charges  to  those  of  this 
State  merely  because,  in  petitioning  a  legislative  body  of  this  State, 
it  would  have  been  absurd  for  us  to  speak  of  asylums  outside  of  the 
State  limits. 

In  concluding  this  prefatory  portion  of  the  report,  your  commit- . 
tee  would  subjoin  a  few  remarks  on  the  manner  in  which  the  major- 
ity of  the  superintendents  acted  on  the  occasion  of  our  petition. 

It  is  a  notorious  fact  that  the  superintendent  present  at  the  read- 
ing of  the  paper  in  which  the  petition  partly  had  its  origin,  although 
repeatedly  called  on  by  the  then  President  of  the  New  York  Neu- 
rological Society,  did  not  venture  to  discuss  the  subject  before  a  med- 


22 

ical  audience.  It  is  equally  unquestionable  that  not  one  of  the 
publications '  criticising  the  medical  and  administrative  management 
of  our  asylums,  although  published  in  the  leading  special  medical 
journals  of  this  country,  scattered  widely  in  the  shape  of  reprints, 
and  endorsed  in  the  main  by  eminent  transatlantic  and  cisatlantic 
journals,  has  been  answered.  Nor  has  even  an  attempt  at  an  answer 
been  made  save  in  the  way  of  a  pei-sonal  attack. 

The  representatives  of  the  asylum  circle,  on  the  appearance  of  the 
petition,  instead  of  courting  an  investigation,  resorted  to  every  expe- 
dient that  could  be  devised  to  check  it.  Probably  on  no  other  occa- 
sion have  there  been  made  such  systematic  and  persistent  attempts 
to  intimidate  signers  of  a  petition,  and  to  defame,  or  misrepresent, 
its  originators,  *  and  there  is  no  one  element  in  the  case  so  regrettable 
as  that  in  the  Senate  Committee  on  Public  Health  these  men  found 
the  necessary  support. 

'  The  following  appearing  prior  to  the  examination  (?)  by  the  Senate 
Committee  :  1.  "  Governmental  Supervision  of  the  Insane,"  Mslj  1,  1875,  by 
H.  B.  Wilbur,  M.D.  2.  "  Buildings  for  the  Insane,"  1877  (read  before  the  Sa- 
ratoga Conference  of  Charities),  by  H.  B.  Wilbur,  M.D.  3.  "  Extracts  from  the 
Twentieth  Annual  Report  of  Commissioners  of  Lunacy  of  Scotland,  for  the 
year  1877,"  with  an  introduction  by  H.  B.  Wilbur,  M.D.  (no  date).  4.  ''Man- 
agement of  the  Insane  in  Great  Britain,"  by  H.  B.  Wilbur,  M.D.,  1877.  5.  "Re- 
form in  Scientific  Psychiatry,"  Ain.  Journal  of  Mental  and  Nervous  Diseases, 
April,  1878,  E.  C.  Spitzka,  M.D. ;  read  before  the  New  York  Neurological  So- 
ciety, March  4,  1878.  (i.  ' '  Merits  and  Motives  of  the  Movement  for  Asylum 
Reform,"  E.  C.  Spitzka,  M.D. ;  reprinted  from  Journal  of  Mental  and  Nervous 
Diseases,  October,  1878.  7.  "The  Non-Asylum  Treatment  of  the  Insane'' 
(read,  by  mvitation,  before  the  Medical  Society  of  the  State  of  New  York,  and 
reprinted  from  the  Transactions),  by  Wm.  A.  Hammond,  M.D.,  1879.  The  fol- 
lowing have  appeared  since  :  1.  "  The  Construction,  Organization,  and  Equip- 
ment of  Hospitals  for  the  Insane,"  by  W.  A.  Hammond,  M.D.;  read  before  the 
Connecticut  Medical  Society,  May  29,  1879.  2.  Lunacy  Reform  :  I.  "  Histori- 
cal Considerations,"  Archives  of  Med. ,  Oct. ,  1879,  E.  C.  Seguin,  M.D.  3.  Lun- 
acy Reform  :  II.  "Insufficiency  of  the  Medical  Staffs  of  Asylums,"  Ibid.,  Dec, 
1879,  E.  C.  Seguin.  M.D. 

=■  Thus  Dr.  Carlos  A.  Macdonald  states  (p.  16,  S.  C.  R.)  :  "  I  met  Dr.  Wil- 
lard  Parker  not  long  since,  and  in  conversation  with  him  about  it  (the  peti- 
tion; note  of  committee),  he  said  that  he  had  not  signed  a  petition  making 
such  allegations  ;  having  a  copy  of  the  petition,  Dr.  Wey,  of  Elmira,  read  it 
to  him,  and  then  he  said,  "I  never  signed  that  jjetition "  (Exhibit  V.). 
The  same  superintendent  states,  somewhat  in  conflict  with  the  assertions  of 
the  Commissioner  in  Lunacy,  that  the  latter  has  made  night  inspections  at  his 
asylum.  No  statement  of  bad  results  is  made  by  Dr.  Carlos  A.  Macdonald, 
and  the  question  arises  why  were  they  not  made  elsewhere,  or  if  the  commis- 
sioner had  reason  to  anticipate  bad  results,  why  did  he  make  them  at  all. 


23 

Your  committee  does  not  find  it  necessary  to  refer  to  the  fact 
that  these  strictures  do  not  apply  to  all  the  superintendents  of  the 
State,  or  to  all  the  medical  officers  of  asylums.  Nor  did  the  original 
petition,  or  any  of  its  signers,  who  wei-e  present  at  Albany,  say  any- 
thing that  could  be  so  construed.  In  fact  frequent  occasion  was 
taken  to  insist  that  the  charges  were  not  personal,  and  that  such  as 
involved  the  capability  of  individuals  were  not  general,  as  a  perusal 
of  the  Senate  Committee's  Report  will  show.  It  is  merely  iu  justice 
to  the  one  superintendent,  who  gave  a  fair  and  unbiassed  testimony, 
to  mention  the  fact  that  Dr.  Cleaveland  fearlessly  acknowledged  the 
crib  to  be  an  injurious  appliance  in  many  cases,  that  he  had  discon- 
tinued its  use,  and  that  the  Commissioner  in  Limacy,  on  some  occa- 
sions at  least,  did  not  visit  his  asylum  without  warning. 

The  position  advocated  by  the  unjustly  and  coarsely  maligned 
petition  is  a  strong  and  unimpregnable  one.  Already  its  influence 
is  felt  throughout  the  State.  After  its  appearance,  and  in  conse- 
quence of  that  appearance,  Consulting  Boards  have  been  appointed 
for  one  State  (Poughkeepsie),  and  two  County  Asylums,  instruments 
for  scientific  research  been  purchased  by  the  Superintendent  of  one 
State  Asylum  and  by  the  Commissioners  of  Charities  and  Correction 
for  the  two  asylums  under  their  charge.  The  Utica  crib  has  had  its 
essential  portion  (the  grated  lid)  removed  at  another;^  and  with  re- 
gard to  this  one  instrument  of  restraint  at  least,  it  can  be  safely  pre- 
dicted that  before  long,  in  the  State  of  New  York,  the  Utica  crib 
will  have  had  its  day. 

Even  in  those  asylums  whose  condition  was  most  questionable, 
prior  to  the  appearance  of  the  petition,  many  changes  are  being 
slowly  made  for  the  better,  possibly  in  anticipation  of  a  bona  fide 
investigation  which  may  occur  under  the  auspices  of  a  more  sincere 
legislative  inquiry,  or  the  force  of  a  healthy  and  properly  enlightened 
public  opinion. 

Whatever  the  motive  of  those  making  these  reforms,  whether  the 
result  of  honest  conviction,  or  of  fear,  and  however  persistent  and 
unscrupulous  the  efforts  made  by  some  to  rob  the  New  York  Neuro- 
logical Society  of  the  credit  it  deserves,  namely,  of  having  directly 
or  indirectly  caused  these  reforms  to  be  instituted,  this  Society,  al- 
though temporarily  interrupted  in  its  main  object  through  the  coali- 

'  Ward's  Island.  The  local  visiting  Committee  of  the  State  Charities  Aid 
Association  having  strongly  condemned  it  subsequent  to  the  New  York  Neu- 
rological Society's  petition. 


24     • 

tion  of  elements  of  a  questionable  character,  points  with  some  satis- 
faction to  the  good  work  already  accomplished.  It  accepts  this  as 
the  augury  of  a  more  thorough  and  lasting  reform  in  the  near  future, 
and  as  a  justification  of  a  further  continuance  in  its  labors, 

T.  A.  McBride,  M.D.,  Chairman. 
Edward  C.  Spitzka,  M.D. 
Ed.  C.  Harwood,  M.D. 
William  J.  Morton,  M.D. 
E.  C.  Seguin,  M.D. 
Landon  Carter  Gray,  M.D. 
William  A.  Hammond,  M.D. 

Committee  on  Asylum  Abuses  of  the 
New  York  Neurological  Society. 


APPENDIX. 


State  op  New  York, 
CIty  anb  County  op  New  York, 


EXHIBIT  A.     (Referred  to,  p.  5.) 


Edward  Constant  Seguin,  a  resident  of  New  York  City,  being  duly  sworn, 
deposeth : 

That  one  evening  in  the  month  of  December,  1878,  he  called  at  the  Presi- 
dent's house,  Columbia  College,  corner  of  Fourth  Avenue  and  Forty-ninth 
Street,  and  there  saw  Dr.  F.  A.  P.  Barnard,  President  of  Columbia  College. 

Deponent  bore  with  him  a  copy  of  a  petition  emanating  from  the  New 
York  Neurological  Society,  addressed  to  the  State  Legislature,  and  praying 
for  a  strict  inquiry  into  the  management  of  all  institutions  for  the  care  of  the 
insane  in  the  State  of  New  York.  That  Dr.  Barnard  stated  (in  the  hall  of  the 
house)  that  he  had  friends  with  him,  with  whom  he  was  closely  engaged,  and 
could  not  spare  the  time  to  speak  with  deponent.  Deponent  then  simply 
stated  the  object  and  origin  of  the  petition  ;  he  did  not  in  any  manner  urge 
Dr.  Barnard  to  sign  the  document,  but  asked  him  to  take  it,  read  it  at  his 
leisure,  and  sign  it  if  he  approved  its  object.  Dr.  Barnard  did  take  the  peti- 
tion from  deponent,  kept  it  in  his  possession  three,  if  not  four  days,  and  re- 
turned it  to  deponent  with  his  signature  appended,  and  with  a  note.  This 
note,  unfortunately,  has  been  lost,  but  to  the  best  of  deponent's  recollection  it 
expressed  the  fact  of  the  signature  and  some  reservations  as  to  certain  points 
in  the  petition. 

Deponent  further  avers  that  Dr.  Barnard's  first  hasty  denial  of  the  truthful- 
ness of  his  signature  (in  a  letter  to  Hon.  Hamilton  Fish,  Junior,  then  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Legislature),  and  his  subsequent  letters  to  the  Committee  on  Public 
Health  (Mr.  Goebel,  Chairman),  making  the  statement  that  he  did  not  remem- 
ber the  acts  of  reading  and  signing  the  petition,  and  conveying  the  impression 
that  if  he  had  signed  the  document  it  was  under  misapprehension,  and  at  the 
solicitation  of  deponent;  that  all  these  statements,  which  have  been  made 
very  public^  were  not,  with  the  exception  of  the  mere  matter  of  recollection, 
true  in  spirit  or  in  fact. 

Deponent  repeats,  in  the  most  solemn  manner,  that  Dr.  Barnard  did  sign  the 
petition,  signed  it  after  keeping  it  three  days  at  least,  and  that  he  (deponent) 
did  not  have  an  opportunity  to  urge  Dr.  Barnard  to  sign  the  document.     In- 


26 

deed,  deponent  well  knew  tliat  a  man  of  Dr.  Barnard's  intellectual  calibre  would 
not  sign  an  important  document  at  any  one's  solicitation  witliout  properly 
reading  and  comprehending  it. 

[Signed]  E.  C.  Sksuin. 

Sworn   and  subscribed  to  before  ) 
me  this  20th  of  December,  1879,  f 

E.  D.  Grakt, 

Notary  Public^  New  York  Go. 


EXHIBIT  B.'     (Referred  to,  p!  6.) 

State  of  New  Yoek,  Senate  Chamber, 
Albany,  April  26,  1879. 

Dear  Sir  : — On  the  20tli  of  March  a  petition  was  presented  to  the  Legis- 
lature, in  which  charges  of  mal-administration  are  made  against  the  various 
lunatic  asylums  of  the  State,  and  against  the  State  Commissioner  in  Lunacy. 
This  petition  was  referred  to  the  Committee  on  Public  Health.  Your  name 
is  appended  to  the  petition.  The  committee  are  ready  to  examine  yon  on  the 
matter,  and  request  that  you  will  appear  before  them  on  the  eighth  day  of 
May,  at  three  o'clock,  to  state  what  personal  knowledge  you  have  of  asylums 
and  of  the  manner  in  which  the  State  Commissioner  in  Lunacy  has  discharged 
his  duties,  and  the' facts  on  which  you  have  made  the  allegations  set  forth  in 
the  petition.     The  committee  request  an  early  reply. 

;  Yery  truly  yours, 

L.    S.    GOEBEL, 
A.    J.    GrOODWIN, 

Committee  on  Public  Health. 
Edward  C.  Spitzka,  M.D. 


EXHIBIT  C.2     (Referred  to,  p.  10.) 

{From  the  stenograjphic  report  of  the  evidence  taken  before  the  State  Com- 
mifssioner  in  Lunacy  in  the  case  of  Mrs.  Norton  against  the  Blooming  dale 
Asylum.'] 

Mrs.   Cochrane   says   she  saw  Jane  Eaton   and  Jane   Gordon,    nurses  in 

Bloomingdale,  forcibly  feeding  a  patient.     They  had  a  wooden  wedge  which 

they  put  into  her  mouth,  and  then  they  fed  her  with  a  spoon.     (Fol.    93.) 

Dr.  Choate  says  it  is  done  by  attendants  in  asylums.     (Fol.  119.) 

Jane  Eaton,  a  nurse,  puts  on  the  camisole  without  instructions  from  the 

physician.     (Fol.  125.)     Was  told  to  use  force  in  feeding.     (Fol.  127.)     Used 

'  Attention  is  called  to  the  words,  "personal  knowledge."  and  to  the  in- 
ference which  the  Senate  Committee  seems  to  have  made,  that  the  signers  of 
the  petition  were  not  justified  in  questioning  the  efficiency  of  the  Commissioner 
in  Lunacy  unless  they  had  accompanied  that  officer  on  histoars  of  inspection; 
truly  a  demand  characteristic  of  this  Senate  Committee. — Note  of  Committee. 

-  Testimony  excluded  by  Senate  Committee. 


a  spoon  as  a  wedge  to  force  open  the  mouth.    "  The  most  difficult  person  I 
ever  had  to  feed."     (Fol.  183. ) 

The  doctor  was  never  present  when  she  was  fed.     (Fol.  133. ) 
The  nurse  does  not  always  report  to  the  physician  when  she  uses  the 
camisole.     Has  seen  blood  come  from  Mrs.  N 's  mouth  when  she  was  feed- 
ing her.     (Fol.  138.) 

Was  taken  naked  from  her  room  to  the  bath-room.     (Fol.  146.) 

The  doctor  says  forcible  feeding  is  delegated  to  an  attendant.     (Fol.  150. ; 


EXHIBIT  D.     (Referred  to,  p.  11.) 

Office  of  Wir.  C.  Browning  &  Co. , 

Wholesale  Clothiers,  502  and  504  Broadway, 
New  York,  December  27,  1879. 

Dr.  Edward  C.  Harwood,  44  West  Forty-ninth  Street,  City : 

Dear  Sir — About  one  year  since  you  presented  to  me  a  memorial  and 
petition,  asking  my  signature  to  same,  to  be  sent  to  the  Legislature  of  State  of 
New  York,  petitioning  that  body  to  appoint  a  committee  to  investigate  the 
Lunatic  Asylums  of  this  State.  I  read  the  m.emorial  myself  and  signed 
same,  and  then  presented  same  to  Wm.  C.  Browning,  head  of  the  firm  of 
W.  C.  Browning  &  Co.,  Broadway,  and  told  him,  as  near  as  I  could  re- 
member, what  said  memorial  was  for. 

He  signed  same.  I  then  went  through  the  house  and  obtained  between 
fifty  and  sixty  signatures  to  same,  telling  each  person  the  purport  of  the  me- 
morial and  what  it  was  for. 

A  short  time  since  I  saw  a  report,  purporting  as  coming  from  that  '  Com- 
mittee, setting  things  in  a  very  different  light  from  the  facts  that  I  have 
stated  in  regard  to  the  signatures  obtained  in  said  house. 

I  also  have  just  read  again  a  copy  of  the  memorial  which  Mr.  Brown- 
ing and  myself  signed,  and  find  it  same  as  first.  My  signature,  Mr.  Wm. 
C.  Browning'' s,  and  all  tlie  balance  in  house  were  obtained  by  myself  (Mr.  Wm. 
C.  Browning  was  my  employer),  and  I  had  a  gentleman  with  me  who  was 
present  all  the  time,  and  in  conclusion  would  say  you  are  at  liberty  to  pub- 
lish this  if  you  wish. 

Yours  truly, 

A.  R.  Yan  Ness. 


EXHIBIT  E.     (Referred  to,  p.  11.) 

Office  of  W>i.  C.  Browning  &  Co. , 

Wlwlesale  Clothiers,  502  and  504  Broadway, 

New  York,  December  30,  1874. 

Dr.  Ed.  C.  Harwood  : 

My  Dear  Sir — About  a  year  since  I  signed  a  petition,  at  the  request  of 
Mr.  A.  R.  Van  Ness,  asking  the  Legislature  to  appoiut  a  committee  to  in- 
vestigate our  lunatic  asylums. 

'  See  Report  of  Committee  on  Public  Health,  page  48. 


28 

Some  time  after  this  was  done  a  Dr  McDonald'  called  to  see  me,  and 
said  he  wanted  to  know  what  abuses  I  knew  existed  in  the  lunatic  asylum. 
I  told  him  I  did  not  know  of  any.  He  said  I  had  signed  a  petition  which 
set  forth  that  from  my  own  personal  knowledge  1  knew  abuses  existed.  I  re- 
plied that  if  such  was  the  case  it  was  a  mistake,  as  I  did  not  know  of  such 
a  fact,  nor  did  I  think  I  had  signed  such  a  petition ;  but  I  had  signed  a 
petition  at  the  request  of  a  friend  who  told  me  such  abuses  did  exist,  ask- 
ing for  a  committee  to  be  appointed  to  investigate  into  the  management  of 
said  asylums. 

He  further  asked  me  if  I  thought  the  other  parties  in  my  employ  who 
had  signed  the  petition  knew  of  their  own  personal  knowledge  that  such 
abuses  existed.  I  replied  they  signed  the  same  petition  and  under  the  same 
circumstances  that  I  did.     Trusting  this  will  explain  the  matter,  I  am 

Very  truly  yours, 

W.  C.  BKOWNiNa. 

^ote  to  above : — With  reference  to  this  reported  statement  of  Dr.  Blac- 
donald  I  would  say  that  it  was  wholly  unjustifiable,  as  nowhere  in  the 
petition  is  it  stated  that  the  signers  know  any  of  the  facts  involved  of 
their  own  personal  knowledge. 

Ed.  C.  Hakwood,  M.D, 


EXHIBIT    F.     (Referred  to,  p.  14.) 

Department  of  Public  Charities  and  Correction. 
Commissioner's  Office,  No.  66  Third  Avenue, 
New  York,  December  17,  1879. 

E.  C.  Seguin,  M.D.  : 

Sir — In  reply  to  your  favor  of  1st  inst.,  I  beg  to  state  that  the  follow- 
ing gentlemen  were  undergraduates  when  appointed  assistant  physicians : 
C.  N.  Gorgas,  John  Bowen,  Thomas  J.  Naylor,  Emil  Mayer,  at  Lunatic 
Asylum,  BlackwelPs  Island;  and  W.  L.  Harriman,  N.  L.  Atkinson,  H.  V. 
Day,  W.  Washburn,  L.  F.  Pitkin,  at  Insane  Asylum,  Ward's  Island. 

Yours  respectfully, 
[Signed]  Joshua  Phillips, 

Secretary. 

The  facts  in  the  above  letter  were  obtained  from  Dr.  A.  E.  Macdonald 
by  the  Commissioners.  I  have  seen  Dr.  Macdonald's  report  to  the  Commis- 
sioners giving  these  names.  The  appointments  were  made  between  1876  and 
1878. 

E.  C.  Seguin,  M.D. 


'A  reference  to  page  48  of  the  Senate  Committee's  Renort  will  show 
that  this  name  is  erroneously  spelled  ;  it  should  be  Dr.  Macdonald  (the 
Superintendent  of  the  Ward's  island  Asylum). — livte  of  iSub-  Committee. 


EXHIBIT  G.  (Referred  to,  p.  29.) 

From  an  Editorial  of  the  Jownal  of  Mental  and  Nervous  Diseases.     Edited 
by  Drs.  Jewell  and  Bannister,  of  Chicago.     April,  1878. 

"But  we  now  have  in  mind  the  exceptionally  high  requirements  implied  in 
the  case  of  those  charged  with  the  medical  care  of  the  insane,  and  per  contra 
the  exceptionally  low  state  of  truly  scientific  psychiatry  in  this  country. 
There  can  be  no  possible  doubt  that  too  little  zeal  on  behalf  of  the  scientific 
a.spect  of  this  noble  department  of  medicine  has  been  shown  by  American 
alieniflta  as  a  body." 


EXHIBIT  H.   (Referred  to,  p.  29.) 

From  same  Journal.    Editorial,  July,  1879. 

*'  We  have  something  more  than  a  fear  that  asylums  as  a  whole  will  not 
bear  a  close  scientific  and  business  scrutiny.  A  long  time  since  we  called 
attention  to  the  enormous  expense  of  building  and  maintaining  our  asylums. 
In  particularizing,  we  gave  a  review  of  figures  from  its  own  reports  of  the 
financial  management  of  the  asylum  at  Utica,  N.  Y.,  which  seemed  '  then,  as 
it  does  now,  to  require  explanation.  Subsequently  the  Medical  Record  called 
on  its  chief  to'  explain  his  own  figures.  But  to  this  day  no  explanation  has 
been  publicly  made,  nor  has  any  apparent  heed  been  given  to  the  matter. 
People  will  form  their  own  notions  as  to  the  reason  or  motive  for  such  silence 
in  the  face  of  such  a  dubious  financial  showing.  And  we  can,  as  outsiders, 
assert  that  the  public  has  formed  opinions  as  to  the  motives  for  withholding 
the  explanation  which  the  case  so  plainly  demands." 


EXHIBIT  J.     (Referred  to,  p.  16.) 

From  VircTiow-HirscKs  Jahresbericht  fur  das  JaTir  1 874.  Abtheilung  fiir 
Psychiatrie  (von  Professor  Westphal).  Bd.  II.,  Heft  1,  p.  108,  refer- 
ring to  :  "Pathology  of  Insanity.  By  John  P.  Gray,  M.D.,  Superin- 
tendent of  the  New  York  State  Lunatic  Asylum,  from  the  American 
Journal  of  Insanity  for  July,  1874." 

"  Der  beneidenswerthe  Verfasser  kennt  ganz  genau  die  histologischen 
Veranderungen  des  Gehirns  bei  Geisteskranken.  lUustrirt  durch  Photogra- 
phien  mikroscopischer  Praperate,  in  denen  Referent  wenigstens  so  gut  wie 
gar  nichts  von  dem  sieht  was  sie  zeigen  soUen."  '^ 

^  Amply  verified  since  by  the  revelations  made  to  Comptroller  Olcott ;  see 
the  latter's  report  (Exhibit  Z). 

"  The  irony  in  the  first  part  can  hardly  be  rendered  in  the  translation  : 
*'  The  enviable  author  knows,  with  complete  accuracy,  the  histological  changes 
of  the  brain  of  the  insane  —  illustrated  by  microphotographs,  in  which  the 
reviewer  can,  to  say  the  least,  see  as  little  as  noftiing  of  that  which  they  are 
intended  to  show."  These  are  the  same  microphotographs  which  have  been 
stated  to  exhibit  artificial  precipitates  such  as  can  be  produced  by  the  action  of 
absolute  alcohol  on  healthy  human  and  animal  brains. — Note  of  SSuh-  Comm  ittee- 


30 


EXHIBIT  K.    (Eef erred  to,  p.  16.) 

Frmi  the  Journal  of  Mental  Scien  e  {the  organ  of  the  British  Medico-Psycholo- 
gical /Society),  July,  1878.     Editorial  notice. 

"  Under  the  above  title,  Dr.  Spitzka  publishes  an  address  to  the  New  York 
Neurol ogicrJ  Society,  iu  the  April  number  of  the  Journal  of  Mental  and  Nerv- 
ous Diseases^  in  which  he  criticises  most  severely,  many  people  would  say  in- 
temperately,  the  work  of  American  asylum  physicians,  and  the  policy  of  the 
American  Association  uf  Asylum  Superintendents.  There  is  much  truth, 
however,  in  what  Dr.  Spitzka  says,  and  we  think  our  American  brethren 
would  do  well  to  take  heed  to  this  and  many  other  indications  that  a  more 
liberal  and  open  mode  of  conducting  their  asylums,  and  managing  their  asso- 
ciation, is  requii-ed For  example,  we  have  never  sympathized  with 

the  exclusive  and  unscientific  spirit  which  shuts  out  assistant  medical  ofiicers 
of  asylums  from  the  privilege  of  membership.  We  hold  it  to  be  a  mistake  in 
policy,  a  misfortune  in  practice,  and  unjustifiable  on  any  ground.  Dr. 
Spitzka's  article  is  also  a  plea  for  the  appointment  of  visiting  physicians  to 
American  asylums,  who  shall  enjoy  the  position  and  means  of  studying  disease 
which  the  visiting  physicians  of  hospitals  enjoy " 


EXHIBIT  L.  (Referred  to,  p.  17.) 

From  "  Bucknill  on  Asylums  in  America,''''  p.  38  (referring  to  the  State  Asy- 
lum at  Utica). 

"  The   asylum  contains  six   hundred  and  fifty  patients, and  I 

was  pleased  to  find  that  not  one  patient  was  either  under  restraint  or  in  se- 
clusion. I  observed  one  young  man  in  a  state  of  great  excitement,  suffering 
indeed  under  the  restlessness  of  the  most  acute  mania.  He  was  under  the 
sole  charge  of  two  attendants,  who  were  carefully  walking  about  with  him, 
holding  him  on  each  side,^  and  I  could  not  refrain  from  asking  Dr.  G-ray  why 
he  did  not  order  him  into  mechanical  restraint,  as  it  appeared  to  me  just  the 
•'ase  in  which  it  would  be  justifiable,  if  in  any.  Dr.  Gray  replied  that  he  did 
not  use  restraint,  but  I  found  him  indisposed  -  to  talk  on  the  subject,  as  he 
admitted  that  his  practice  was  not  in  conformity  with  the  opinions  of  his  pro- 


•  '  The  insincerity  of  the  exhibition  to  which  Dr.  Bucknill  was  treated  at 
Utica  is  not  the  only  fact  illustrated,  but  it  is  also  shown  that  the  very  patients 
treated  with  restraint  at  this  asylum,  to  this  day,  can  be  very  well  treated 
without. — Note  of  Committee. 

'  The  Committee  on  Asylum  Abuses  fully  understands  the  reasons  why 
Dr.  Bucknill's  informant  was  indisposed  to  speak  on  the  subject.  They  were 
something  widely  different  from  what  Dr.  Bucknill  charitably  interpreted 
them  to  be.  "  Embarrassed"  would  have  been,  perhaps,  the  better  word. — 
Note  of  Committee. 


31 

fessional  brethren,  and  he  evidently  preferred  to  treat  his  own  patients  as  he 
thought  best,  without  opening  a  blazing  question.'  As  no  one  was  in  re- 
straint in  this  asylum,  neither  was  there  any  one  in  seclusion 

"  On  a  visit  to  another  institution,  which  I  shall  not  indicate,'-'  I  was  in- 
troduced to  a  young  man  who  was  described  to  me  as  the  supreme  authority ; 
his  colleagues,  engaged  in  business,  leaving  almost  all  the  power  in  his  hands. 
He  was  Vi  politician,  in  the  American  sense  of  the  word,  which  is  not  compli- 
mentary, and  had  begun  his  official  career  as  night  watch  in  a  hospital,'  and 
the  institution  over  which  he  held  sway  presented  a  remarkable  contrast  to 

that  of  Utica."* How   is   it,   then,   that  the   insane   poor  of  these 

most  important  cities  are  left  in  a  condition  which  no  American,  true  to 
his  country's  honor,  can  think  of,  if  he  knows  it,  without  regret  or  dissatis- 
faction ?  The  explanation  which  I  have  heard  is  that  the  politics  of  the  cities 
are  more  corrupt  than  those  of  the  States,  and  tend  to  the  selection  of  coarser 
instruments  of  the  popular  will ;  and,  if  this  be  so,  the  most  helpless  and 
heavQy  afflicted  of  their  citizens  have  more  to  fear  from  the  degradation  of 
authority  to  its  lowest  level  than  any  other  class,  for  they  have  no  power  in 
the  social  scramble." 


EXHIBIT  M.     (Referred  to,  p.  17.) 

From  same  work,  p.  65. 

"  But  unless  I  am  much  mistaken,  the  superintendents  of  asylums  in 
America  have  a  heavy  task  before  them,  which  will  indeed  require  a  deter- 
mined effort  before  they  can  say  that  they  possess  the  confidence  of  the  public 

'  Says  Dr.  Wilbur  ("Management  of  the  Insane  in  Great  Britain ")  :  "  On 
the  contrary.  Dr.  Gray  has  for  years  been  a  loud-mouthed  opponent  of  the 
doctrine,  as  the  pages  of  the  American  Journal  of  Insanity,  and  the  proceed- 
ings of  the  American  Association  of  Asylum  Superintendents  of  Insane  Asy- 
lums will  show.  He  has  neglected  no  opportunity  to  reprobate  or  ridicule  the 
views  of  its  advocates.  He  has  defended  the  use  of  restraining  apparatus  in 
his  annual  reports,  and  he  has  freely  used  it  at  the  asylum  under  his  charge. 
His  favorite  method  is  a  crib  bedstead,  of  which  he  has  some  thirty  or  more 
in  his  wards  ;  but  he  does  not  hesitate  to  employ  muffs,  wristlets,  straps,  belts, 
strong  waists,  and  camisoles,  as  a  means  of  controlling  patients,  and  not  alone 
for  surgical  reasons It  was  not  strange  that  Dr.  Gray,  out  of  re- 
spect to  the  opinion  of  his  distinguished  visitor,  kept  his  restraining  appa- 
ratus in  the  background And  patients  have  been  kept  in  the  crib 

bedsteads  at  Utica  for  ruonths  at  a  time." 

^  The  Sub-Committee  of  the  New  York  Neurological  Society  will  do  so, 
however.     It  is  the  City  Insane  Asylum,  on  Ward's  Island,  that  is  reierred  to. 

^  It  may  be  of  interest  to  the  reader  to  know  that  the  facts  are  exactly 
as  stated  by  Dr.  Bucknill.  The  same  per=^on  described  above  is  still  a  com- 
missioner, and  was  at  one  time  the  President  of  the  Commission. —i^To^e  of 
Sub-  Co^nmittee. 

■*  This  cannot  be  remotely,  even,  construed  as  showing  superiority  in 
medical  management,  but  only  of  a  greater  amount  of  financial  resources. 
We  must  take  into  account,  too,  the  systematic  deception  practised  on  Dr. 
Bucknill. — Note  of  Committee. 


32 

in  the  same  degree  to  which  of  late  years  it  has  been  extended  in  England  to 
the  management  of  our  county  asylums  and  hospitals  for  the  insane.  With 
us  the  management  of  our  asylums  is  open  and  patent ;  abuses  occur,  as  they 
will  occur,  everywhere  ;  but  they  are  remedied,  and,  if  need  be,  punished 
in  the  most  public  manner,  and  the  records  of  them  are  displayed  to  the 
eyes  of  the  world.  It  is  thus  that  the  American  journals,  in  replying  to  The 
LanceCs  leading  article  on  American  asylums,  have  been  able  to  cite  so  many 
instances  of  disaster  in  our  asylum  work.  But  where  shall  we  look*  for  any 
record  of  wrong-doing  or  misfortune,  which,  in  the  nature  of  things,  must 
take  place  in  American  asylums  also  ?  So  far  as  I  know  it  does  not  exist. 
There  is  in  America  no  central  authority  to  prosecute  and  punish  such" 
wrong,  and  no  public  record  of  circumstances  to  lament  and  avoid. 

' '  Putting  altogether  out  of  consideration  opinions  and  sentiments  which 
were  expressed  to  me  privately,  few  things  struck  me  more  forcibly  in 
America  than  the  painful  sensibility  to  public  opinion  wbich  was  manifested 
both  at  the  conclave  of  medical  superintendents,  which  I  had  the  great 
pleasure  to  attend,  and  in  the  published  transactions  of  that  held  last  year. 
I  think  I  may  truly  say  that  nothing  of  the  kind  exists  with  us,  and  few 
things  would  surprise  me  more  than  to  hear  a  debate  at  one  of  the  annual 
meetings  of  our  Medico-Psychological  Association  upon  the  necessity  of  pre- 
venting or  curtailing  the  transmission  of  the  letters  of  patients  in 
asylums  either  to  their  friends  or  to  public  authorities,  or  a  discussion  in 
which  it  was  maintained  that  the  absence  on  leave  or  the  discharge  of  un- 
cured  patients  was  undesirable  on  account  of  the  accusations  and  complaints 
which  such  persons  were  liable  to  make  about  their  treatment ;  and,  as  a  final 
instance  of  this  difiEerence  of  feeling,  I  may  mention  that  the  Lancet  Com- 
mission, which  will  be  generally  welcome  to  English  asylums  in  proportion  to 
its  ability  and  thorough  faithfulness,  has  been  deprecated  in  the  American 
Jownal  of  Insanity  SiS  an  "insult  to  the  Commissioners  in  Lunacy  and  the 
medical  staff  of  every  English  hospital." 

"  Pondering  these  things,  and  many  others  with,  which  I  should  not 
be  justified  in  occupying  space,  I  have  been  able  to  come  to  no  other  con- 
clusion than  that  the  great  stumbling-block  of  the  American  superintendents 
is  their  most  unfortunate  and  unhappy  resistance  to  the  abolition  of  mechani- 
cal restraint.  I  was  told  everywhere,  except  at  Utica,  that  this  question  was 
settled  in  America,  and  that  it  would  be  useless  and  futile  to  reopen  it.  I 
was  informed  that,  after  many  minor  discussions,  a  great  and  final  discussion 
of  the  whole  question  had  taken  place  in  1874  at  Nashville,  and  that  the 
superintendents  had  there  unanimously  decided  that  the  abolition  of 
mechanical  restraint  was  utterly  impracticable,  and  that  the  statements 
of  the  English  on  the  subject  were  not  to  be  relied  on.  I  was  again 
and  again  informed  that  the  system  of  non-restraint  had  proved  quite  a 
failure  in  England,  and  that  we  were  rapidly  returning  to  the  old  practices. 
As  such  statements  were  not  very  agreeable  to  me,  and  especially  as  I  found 
that  ray  contradiction  could  be  met  by  the  published  opinions  of  some  two 
or  three  English  superintendents,  who,  although  no  prophets  in  their  own 
country,  are  eagerly  quoted  abroad,  I  resorted  to  the  somewhat  vulgar  ex- 
pedient of  offering  a  bet  as  an  expression,  or,  if  you  will,  metre  of  my  belief. 


,  .  .  .  The  bet  was  not  a  thoughtless  thing,  and  it  certainly  was  not  considered 
a  rash  one ;  for  although  I  repeated  it  both  privately  and  before  many  superin- 
tendents at  Auburn,  it  was  not  accepted,  and  it  certainly  stopped  the  talk 
about  a  relapse.  My  ofifer  was  a  wager  of  one  hundred  pounds  that  any 
American  superintendent  should  go  to  England  and  should  have  free  access 
to  all  public  asylums  there,  and  that  iu  a  search  of  one  month  he  would  not 
be  able  to  find  one  patient  therein  in  any  form  of  mechanical  restraint." 


EXHIBIT  N.   (Referred  to,  p.  17.) 

State  op  New  York,  /       . 

City  and  County  of  New  York,  [    •  • 

Edward  Charles  Spitzka,  a  resident  of  the  City  of  New  York,  being  duly 
sworn  deposeth  :  That  in  regard  to  the  statement  of  Dr.  A.  E.  Macdonald, 
published  on  page  thirteen  of  a  document  entitled,  Report  of  the  Committee 
on  Public  Health  Relative  to  Lunatic  Asylums,  transmitted  to  the  Legislature 
May  twenty-second,  1879,  the  following  is  a  substantially  correct  and  true 
account.  Shortly  after  his  return  from  Europe,  deponent  was  enabled — 
through  the  kindness  and  at  the  invitation  of  Doctor  James  G-.  Kieman,  at 
that  time  to  all  intents  and  purposes  superintending  the  medical  management 
of  the  City  Asylum  for  the  insane  on  Ward's  Island — to  make  numerous 
autopsies  on  subjects  dying  with  mental  disease.  These  autopsies  deponent 
made  from  the  end  of  the  year  1875  to  the  beginning  of  the  year  1877,  when 
increasing  engagements  prevented  his  attending  personally,  and  such  organs  as 
deponent  desired  were  sent  to  him  by  several  of  the  assistant  physicians.  Dur- 
ing the  year  1876  Dr.  A.  E.  Macdonald  suggested  to  deponent  that  it  would  be 
very  advantageous  to  deponent,  as  well  as  to  the  institution  under  the  super- 
intendency  of  the  said  A.  E.  Macdonald,  for  deponent  to  fill  the  position  of 
"  special  pathologist "  at  that  institution.  Deponent  long  demurred  from 
taking  any  steps  to  obtain  what  deponent  had  every  reason  to  consider  a  per- 
fectly worthless  and  empty  title,  but  the  said  A.  E.  Macdonald  repeatedly 
pressing  deponent  to  make  a  formal  application,  deponent  finally  consented 
as  a  matter  of  complaisance,  and  because  the  said  A.  E.  Macdonald  represented 
to  him  that  with  the  title  of  "  special  pathologist  "  the  deponent  would  have 
that  right  to  make  post-mortems  officially,  which  at  the  time  he  only  enjoyed 
as  a  matter  of  privilege.  Deponent  then  obtained  two  letters  of  recommen- 
dation, at  Dr.  A.  E.  Macdonald's  suggestion,  from  Drs.  Roosa  and  Janeway, 
which  letters  he  handed  to  the  said  A.  E.  Macdonald.  The  precise  date  de- 
ponent is  unable  to  recall,  not  considering  the  occurrence  at  that  time  of 
enough  importance,  present  or  prospective,  to  make  a  note-  of  it.  Without 
taking  any  further  steps,  deponent  continued  making  the  autopsies  at  the 
asylum  mentioned,  and  in  the  spring  or  summer  of  1876  requested  Dr.  A.  E. 
Macdonald  to  consider  deponent's  application,  made  at  the  said  A.  E.  Mac- 
donald's request  as  aforesaid,  as  withdrawn.  Deponent's  reason  for  with- 
drawing was  that  he  had  learned  that  the  holding  a  position  at  a  given  asy- 

3 


34 

lum  would  debar  him  from  the  privilege  of  committing  patients  to  such  an 
asylum,  under  the  law  of  the  State,  Chapter  446,  Title  1st,  Art,  1-3.  The 
said  A.  E.  Macdonald  then  requested  him  to  continue  utilizing  the  patholo- 
gical material  of  the  asylum  under  his  charge,  and  further  asked  deponent  to 
furnish  brief  abstracts  of  such  pathological  findings  as  would  fill  up  his 
annual  reports.  This  deponent  did,  and  said  findings,  in  several  cases,  are 
published  in  the  said  A.  E.  Macdonald's  annual  asylum  reports  for  the  years 
1875  and  1876,  with  formal  acknowledgments.  At  the  middle  of  the  year 
1877,  deponent  declined  to  make  any  more  autopsies  or  to  receive  any  more 
material  from  the  Ward's  Island  Asylum  for  the  Insane,  as  he  was  then  en- 
gaged in  preparing  a  criticism  of  the  asylum  system  of  the  United  States,  as 
the  result  of  a  growing  conviction,  and  did  not  wish  to  be  placed  in  an  am- 
biguous position,  as  deponent  would  have  been  placed  if  he  had  published 
strictures  based  in  part  on  over  a  hundred  thorough  personal  inspections  of 
the  Ward's  Island  A.sylum,  at  the  time  when  he  made  autopsies  by  favor  in 
said  institution.  If,  therefore,  Dr.  A.  E.  Macdonald  is  correctly  represented 
in  stating  that  deponent  was  a  candidate  for  a  po.'>ition  at  his  asylum,  and 
that  deponent  "was  rejected  on  my  (Dr.  A.  E.  Macdonald's)  recommenda- 
tion," deponent  must  state  most  solemnly  that  this  is  a  gross  misrepresenta- 
tion of  deponent's  position,  because,  first,  deponent  was  not  a  candidate  at 
the  time  when  so  "rejected  ;"  second,  that  he  never  was  a  candidate  at  any 
time  except  in  consequence  of  the  urgent  and  repeated  solicitations  of  the 
said  A.  E.  Macdonald ;  third,  that  he  never  could  have  been  induced  to  per- 
mit the  use  of  his  name  as  a  candidate,  and  at  the  said  A.  E.  Macdonald's 
request,  unless  he  had  been  assured,  as  deponent  was  assured,  that  his  ap- 
pointment was  a  foregone  conclusion ;  and,  finally,  deponent  never  knew,  nor 
would  he  have  knowingly  permitted  the  said  A.  E.  Macdonald,  or  any  one 
else  whom  deponent  could  not  even  remotely  regard  in  the  light  of  a  com- 
petent judge,  to  pass  on  his  "antecedents  and  qualifications."  as  Dr.  A.  E. 
Macdonald,  on  the  forty-eighth  page  of  the  document  alluded  to,  claims  to 
have  done.  Deponent  asserts  aU  and  every  representation  regarding  depo- 
nent by  the  said  A.  E.  Macdonald  as  an  unscrupulous  and  inexcusable  mis- 
representation of  the  true  facts.  The  same  person  might  have  represented 
each  and  every  physician  in  the  State  of  New  York  as  a  disappointed  apijli- 
cant  for  an  asylum  position  on  the  same  grounds  as  he  stated  deponent 
to  be  such  a  disappointed  applicant,  namely,  none  whatever.  Deponent 
further  alleges,  that  the  statement  of  Dr.  Nichols  on  page  twelve  of  the 
same  document,  referring  to  deponent  as  making  "  inquiry  in  regard  to  be- 
coming connected  with  an  institution  for  the  insane  is  utterly  unfounded." 
Deponent  further  alleges  that  his  testimony  is  imperfectly  rendered  in 
the  Senate  Report  aforesaid,  that  the  documentary  evidence  he  had  with  him 
he  was  not  permitted  to  exhibit,  that  he  was  not  permitted  to  give  his 
evidence  properly,  and  that  instead  of  admitting,  as  the  Senate  Committee 
claims,  that  he  had  only  visited  one,  and  that  a  City  Asylum,  deponent 
testified  to  having  visited,  1st,  the  Ward's  Island  Asylum;  2d,  the  Flat- 
bush  Asylum  ;  3d,  the  Htnte  Emigrant  Asylum ;  and  4th,  the  Bloomingdale 
Asylum,  which  latter,  in  company  of  Drs.  McDonald  and  Goldsmith,  he  saw 
v«y  thoroughly.     The* Dr.   McDonald  here  mentioned  is  Dr.   Wm.  H.  Mo- 


35 

Donald,  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  Dr.  A.  E.  Macdonald  referred  to  in 
other  portions  of  this  affidavit. 

E.  C.  Spitzka,  M.D. 

Affirmed  to  before  me  this  7th  ) 
day  of  January,  1880.  J 

John  H.  Timmerman, 

Notary  Public,  New  Fork  County. 


EXHIBIT  O.  (Referred  to,  p.  18.) 

New  York,  130  East  Fiftieth  Street, 
December  28,  1879. 
Dr.  T.  a.  McBride, 

Chairman  of  Committee  on  Asylum  Abuses  of  the  New  York  Neurological 
Society. 
Dear  Doctor  : — The  accompanying  is  a  letter  addressed  by  Dr.  A.  E. 
Macdonald,  Superintendent  of  the  Insane  Asylum  on  Ward's  Island,  to 
William  "W.  Strew,  M.D. ,  late  Superintendent  of  the  asylum  on  BlackweU's 
Island.  It  is  placed  at  my  disposal  by  Dr.  Strew,  and  I  in  turn  have  the 
honor  of  placing  it  at  the  disposal  of  the  committee  of  which  you  are  Chair- 
man. 

Respectfully  yours, 

Edward  C.  Spitzka,  M.D. 

Copy  of  Letter. 

New  York  City  Asylum  for  Insane, 
A.  E.  Macdonald,  M.D.,  Medical  Superintendent, 
New  York,  September  29,  1879. 
DeAB  Doctor  :  — I  should  strongly  advise  you  to  have  nothing  to  do  with 
Dr.  Smith. 

He  was  an  inefficient  assistant  here,  and  I  have  good  reason  to  believe 
that,  so  far  from  being  the  innocent  signer  of  the  petition,  which  he  claims, 
he  was  really  active  in  the  endeavor  to  procure  signatures  to  it.  Dr.  Pitkin 
can  give  you  some  points  about  him. 

I  hope  you  wUl  preserve  this  letter,  as  it  may  be  useful  some  time. 

Yours  sincerely, 

A.  E.  Macdonald. 


.EXHIBIT  P.  (Referred  to,  p.  18.) 
City  and  County  of  New  York,  ss.  : 

I,  James  G.  Kiernan,  of  the  City  and  County  of  New  York,  being  duly 
sworn,  do  depose  and  say  that  I  never  at  any  time  of  my  life  wrote  an  anony- 
mous letter  to  any  one  ;  further,  that  the  exhibit,  if  made  as  claimed  in  the 
State  Senate  Committee  on  Public  Health's  Report,  relative  to  lunatic  asy- 
lums, of  an  anonymous  letter  purporting  to  come  from  myself  must  have  been 
a  falsification,  if  not  something  worse. 


88 

I  further  depose  and  say  that  every  signature  which  I  obtained  to  the 
petition  praying  for  an  investigation  into  lunatic  asylum  management  in  this 
State  was  bona  fide,  and  that  I  either  read  or  explained  the  main  points  of 
the  petition  to  every  signer  individually,  or  left  the  petition  in  their  hands,  in 
order  that  they  might  read  it  themselves. 

I  further  depose  and  say  that  the  statement  of  Dr.  A,  E.  Macdonald, 
representing  myself  as  deceiving  Dr.  Charles  E.  Smith  into  the  belief 
that  the  petition  would  get  me  an  asylum  position  is  utterly  false  as  it 
is  on  its  face  absurd.  Dr.  Charles  R.  Smith  read  the  petition,  expressed  his 
approbation  thereof,  and  did  this  in  presence  of  witnesses  who  can  testify  as 
to  the  truth  of  my  statements. 

I  further  depose  and  state  that  the  so-called  • '  anonymous  letter  from  Dr. 
Kiernan  "  was  not  exhibited  when  I  was  under  examination  before  the  Senate 
Committee  on  Public  Health,  nor  were  any  questions  asked  me  relating  to  it. 

I  further  depose  and  say  that  the  exhibit  of  my  testimony,  as  published 
in  the  report  of  said  committee,  is  mutilated  to  such  an  extent  as  to  be  unre- 
cognizable, that  such  points  as  were  particularly  damaging  to  at  least  one  of 
the  superintendents  are  entirely  omitted,  and  that  when  I  was  proceeding  to 
give  detailed  evidence,  not  only  of  mismanagement,  but  of  criminal  neglect 
occurring  in  a  city  asylum  with  which  I  had  been  connected,  I  was  interrupted 
by  Senator  Goodwin,  who  stated  that  the  Committee  had  heard  enough. 

James  G.  Keernan,  M.D. 

Sworn  to  before  me  this  23d  ) 
day  of  December,  1879.      f 

John  H.  Timjmerman, 

Notary  Public,  New  York  County. 


EXHIBIT  Q.   (Referred  to,  p.  18.) 
Affidavit. 

On  page  33  of  the  Report  of  the  Committee  on  Public  Health  Relative  to 
Lunatic  Asylums,  No.  64,  I  find  the  following  testimony  and  transaction  re- 
corded :  "  Q.  If  you  understood  that  Dr.  Eaeman  had  written  an  anonymous 
threatening  letter  to  the  Ward's  Island  Superintendent,  in  reference  to  this 
matter  of  investigation,  you  would  stiU  have  the  same  respect  for  his  opin- 
ions ?  A.  Any  anonymous  communication  written  by  a  person  would  serve 
to  weaken  my  respect  for  him  ;  I  think  I  would  have  a  great  lack  of  respect 
for  any  man  who  would  write  anonymous  letters.  (Dr.  Macdonald  offered  an 
anonymous  letter  by  Dr.  Kiernan.)  Q.  Do  you  know  that  Dr.  Kiernan  pub- 
licly stated  that  the  object  he  wished  to  accomplish  for  himself  by  this  peti- 
tion was  an  appointment  to  an  asylum  ?  A.  Any  personal  motive  of  that  kind 
would  weaken  my  respect  in  a  man  or  in  his  testimony ;  I  trusted  that  Dr, 
Kieman's  motives  were  pure." 

In  reference  to  the  above  I  hereby  declare  and  certify  that  no  anonymous 
or  other  letter  was  shown  me  at  that  time,  or  at  any  time,  nor  did  I  see  any 
such  letter  in  any  one's  hands,  or  in  the  room,  or  know  that  Buoh  a  letter  was 
introduced  as  a  part  of  the  testimony  or  otherwise. 


37 

Furthermore,  I  am  made  to  say,  "I  trustee?  that  Dr.  Kicman's  motives 
were  pure  ; "  thus  seeming,  after  seeing  or  examining  such  a  letter,  to  change  a 
former  opinion,  and  speak  in  a  condemnatory  way  of  Dr.  Kieman.  The  facts 
are  to  the  contrary.  After  listening  to  several  questions,  some  hypothetically 
and  some  explicitly  reflecting  upon  Dr.  Kieman,  I  said,  in  a  general  way,  and 
waiving  discussion  about  a  question,  about  which  I  was  not  informed,  '*  I  trust 
Dr.  Kiernan's  motives  are  pure  ;"  thus  sustaining,  rather  than  condemning  him. 

The  above  quotation  constitutes  a  serious  misrepresentation  of  my  words, 
and  introduces  an  incident  of  which  I  have  no  knowledge. 

W.  J.  Morton,  M.D., 
December  16,  1879,  33  E.  Thirty-third  Street,  New  York. 

Subscribed  to  before  me  this  18th  ) 
day  of  December,  1879.  \ 

James  G.  McMurrat, 

Notary  Public,  County  of  N.  Y. 


EXHIBIT  K.     (Referred  to,  pp.  19  and  20.) 

From  the  address  of  Senator  McCarthy  before  the  New  Tork  State  Senate. — 

Argiis,  March  7,  1879. 

"And  since  his  appointment  to  this  ofl&ce  he  has  regularly  visited  the  County 
Insane  Asylum  of  Onondaga  County,  and  this  last  year  he  made  a  report, 
dated  May  15,  to  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  in  which  he  says  :  "  The  in- 
stitution is  in  excellent  order,  and  the  patients  well  cared  for  and  comforta- 
ble, a  physician  visits  daily,  and  there  are  hired  attendants,  both  male  and 
female." 

"  Some  time  during  August  or  September  last  one  or  two  members  of  the 
State  Board  of  Charities  visited  the  institution,  and  finding  a  portion  of  it  in 
a  very  bad  condition,  called  upon  the  Board  of  Supervisors  to  appoint  a  com- 
mittee to  examine  into  the  matter.  Such  committee,  consisting  of  three  Super' 
visors,  together  with  Messrs.  Letchworth  and  Hoyt,  President  and  Secretary 
of  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  visited  this  asylum  and  made  the  following 
report:  ' 
'•'■  ^  To  the  Honorable  Board  of  Supervisors  of  Onondaga  County  : 

"  '  Gentlemen — In  response  to  the  resolution  of  your  Board  of  Decem- 
ber 4,  1878,  relating  to  the  department  for  the  insane  of  the  Onondaga  County 
Poor  House,  the  undersigned,  a  committee  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities, 
and  a  committee  of  your  Board,  submitted  this  preliminary  report. 

' '  '  The  committee  have  carefully  examined  the  Poor  House  and  the  depart- 
ment for  the  insane,  and  have  also  taken  considerable  testimony  bearing  on 
the  subject.  We  find  the  building  for  the  insane  badly  arranged  for  the  pur- 
pose, with  many  dark,  damp,  and  unventilated  rooms  ;  that  the  whole  estab- 

'  This  documentary  evidence  was  in  the  hands  of  one  of  the  petitioners, 
and  inasmuch  as  Messrs.  Goodwin  and  Goebel  were  acquainted  with  it  their 
voting  against  Senator  McCarthy's  resolution  shows  how  our  other  evidence 
would  have  been  treated. — Note  of  Committee. 


38' 

lishment  is  greatly  crowded  ;  and  that  there  is  a  lack  of  proper  attendants. 
The  Committee,  impressed  with  the  urgent  necessity  for  immediate  relief, 
recommend  as  follows  : 

* '  '2d.  — As  a  temporary  expedient  the  dungeons  in  both  asylum  buildings 
should  be  immediately  demolished 

"  '  3d. — In  view  of  the  facts  thus  far  developed  by  the  inquiry,  the  commit- 
tees are  of  the  opinion  that  no  expenditure,  looking  to  the  'permanent  occu- 
pancy of  these  buildings  for  the  care  of  the  insane^  is  desirable 

All  of  which  is  respectfully  submitted. 

W.   P.    LeTCHWOBTH,  )    /-Vv,«*»,V//.^/>y/7,., 

President  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities.  (  ^^7/"  #    j 
Chas.  S.  Hoyt,  •'  \     ffAAZ 

Secretary  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities.  )      ^J  O/ianties. 

H.  W.  Clarke,  )  Committee  of  the 
W.  H.  H.  Gere,  S  Board  of  Su- 
E.  V.  King.  )     pervisors.'' 

"  '  A  committee  of  the  Board  of  Supervisors  on  County  Buildings,  after  visitj 
■  ing  the  Poor  House,  next  visited  the  Asylum  for  Insane  Persons,  and  an  editor 
of  one  of  the  Syracuse  daily  papers,  who  accompanied  them,  wrote  as  follows  : 
' '  '  They  next  visited  the  Asylum  for  Insane  Persons.  They  passed  through 
the  various  wards  and  halls  and  found  nothing  that  was  of  a  very  objection- 
able nature.  After  passing  through  the  upper  parts  of  the  building  they  con- 
tinued their  tour  of  investigation,  and  descended  into  a  sort  of  sub-cellar  of 
the  building.  Here  a  sight  met  their  gaze,  and  a  state  of  affairs  was  discovered 
that  they  were  utterly  unprepared  fm^  and  that  utterly  astounded  them.  In 
this  cellar,  which  was  as  dark  as  night,  with  a  stray  gleam  of  light  occasionally 
struggling  through  crevices  and  slight  openings,  were  found  fivepens,  constructed 
of  heavy  plank,  with  plank  doors  that  had  a  small  aperture  in  the  centre. 
The  doors  were  unlocked  and  opened  in  obedience  to  the  committee's  demand. 
The  rays  of  their  lanterns  were  thrown  into  the  interior ,  and  there,  crouched  in 
straw  upon  the  floor,  or  grouped  shuddering  in  the  farthest  corners,  were  naked 
and  half -clad  human  beings.  The  stench  that  arose  from  these  dungeons  was 
of  the  most  repulsive  and  sickening  character,  and  the  atmosphere  was  of  the 
most  stifling  nature.  There  was  n/>  light ^  no  ventilation  and  no  sanitary  con- 
veniences.'' " 


EXHIBIT  S.     (Referred  to  pp.  19  and  20.) 

[Extract  from  a  pamphlet  entitled  Management  of  the  Insane  in  Great  Britain, 
by  H.  B.  Wilbur,  M.  D. ,  Superintendent  of  the  State  Asylum  for  Idiots, 
Syracuse,  N.  Y.,  embodying  quotations  from  the  official  reports  of  the 
Priso7i  Commission  for  187Q .] 

There  is  a  Commissioner  in  Lunacy  in  this  State,  whose  duty  "it  is  to  ex- 
amine into  and  report  annually  to  the  Legislature  the  condition  of  the 
insane    and   the    management    and   conduct    of     the    asylums,   public  and 


39 

private,  and  other  institutions  for  their  care  and  treatment."  To  quote 
from  his  last  annual  report,  "  The  State  Commissioner  of  Lunacy  visits 
when  and  where  he  pleases,  often  at  night  as  well  as  by  day."  His  custom 
is,  however,  to  give  fair  notice  of  his  coming,  and  he  becomes  the  guest  of 
the  medical  officers. 

In  his  report  for  1875  he  gave  an  unqualified  indorsement  of  all  the 
State  asylums  for  the  insane.  He  had  visited  from  time  to  time  the  Asylum 
for  Insane  Convicts  afc  Auburn,  and  he  commended  the  management  of  that 
directly  and  by  implication.  It  occurred,  however,  that  the  "  Prison  Com- 
mission" of  last  year  made  an  investigation  of  the  management  of  that 
establishment,  and  I  quote  from  the  testimony  '  taken  in  regard  to  it. 

Dr.  McDonald,'^  who  was  appointed  Superintendent  in  the  spring  of 
1876,  thus  testified: 

''I  found  the  institution  in  a  decidedly  unsanitary  condition;  I  think 
I  never  saw  its  equal  in  that  respect,  presenting  an  appearance  of 
squalor  and  destitution  beyond  anything  I  have  ever  seen  in  any  pauper  es- 
tablishment or  poor-house;"  "the  bath-rooms  and  water-closets  were  a 
sbench  to  the  nostrils  ; "  "  the  beds  literally  swarmed  with  bugs  ;  "  "  the  food 
badly  cooked  and  badly  served  ;  three-fourths  of  the  patients  were  suffering 
from  dyspepsia  and  bad  diet;  "  3  "  the  bread  was  sour,  the  flour  being  of  an 
inferior  quality  ;  the  cells  dingy  and  dirty  ;"  "  no  provision  for  extra  diet  for 
the  sick  or  feeble  was  made,  except  a  weak  tea  ;"  "  there  were  very  few  of 
the  modem  remedies  used  in  asylums ;  about  the  only  one  was  hydrate  of 
chloral. " 

As  to  punishments.  — ' '  Punishments  were  the  order  of  the  day  when  I 
came  there ;  I  have  a  patient  there  to-day  who  has  a  pistol-ball  in  his  arm, 
that  was  shot  in  by  my  predecessor,  and  another  in  his  hip ;  I  found  one 
patient  with  handcuffs  upon  his  hands  fastened  behind  him;  I  am  told 
patients  were  paddled ;  one  of  my  present  attendants  says  that  he  has  seen 
my  predecessor  black  the  eye  of  a  patient,  and  he  did  not  think  anything  of 
doing  it  himself." 

One  of  the  attendants  testified  to  paddling  patients,  handcuffing  them,  and 
chaining  one  in  a  crib. 

Another  testifies  that  this  "  paddling  "  was  done  even  in  the  case  of  a  female 
patient,  by  the  direction  of  the  assistant  physician.  He  describes  the  paddle 
as  "  a  piece  of  thin  oak  stick,  about  as  thick  as  a  piece  of  heavy  sole-leather, 
and  about  two  and  one-half  inches  wide,  with  a  handle."  This  is  applied  to 
the  naked  body.  He  also  testified  that  a  man  was  chained  up,  shackled  and 
handcuffed  night  and  day  for  about  two  months. 


'Among  the  documentary  evidence  excluded. — N'ote  of  Sub- Committee. 

^  Dr.  Carlos  McDonald ;  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  Dr.  A.  E.  Mac- 
donald  referred  to  in  Exhibits  D,  E,  F,  N,  O,  P,  Q,  X.—Mte  of  Sub- Com- 
mittee. 

■  *  The  suggestion  forces  itself  instantly  on  the  mind  of  the  reader  that 
the  Commissioner  of  Lunacy  would  have  found  a  fitter  sphere  for  the  exer- 
cise of  his  gastronomical  theories  of  insanity  by  paying  some  attention  to  his 
unfortunate  wards,  instead  of  libelling  the  not  yet  insane  farming  population 
of  our  State,  as  in  'Exhibit  U. 


40 

The  Superintendent  habitually  carried  a  revolver.  There  were  no  records, 
medical  or  other\vise,  kept  of  the  daily  life  of  the  patients. 

The  above  items  are  a  few  points  selected  from  whole  pages  of  testimony 
to  the  same  effect,  and  showing  the  grossest  mismanagement  in  an  asylum 
that  the  public  would  naturally  suppose  would  receive  more  attention  at  the 
hands  of  the  Commissioner  of  Lunacy  than  any  other. 

I  perhaps  should  add,  as  a  partial  apology  for  the  Commissioner  of 
Lunacy,  or,  at  all  events,  to  give  him  the  consolation  that  companionship 
affords,  that  at  the  very  time  when  these  abuses  were  committed  at  this  in- 
stitution, the  American  Association  of  Superintendents  of  Insane  Asylums 
met  at  Auburn.  They  spent  a  half-day  in  inspecting  its  wards,  and  then 
passed  resolutions'  which  contained  the  following  language :  "That  their 
visit  had  been  peculiarly  interesting,  as  giving  most  obvious  evidences  of 
good  management." 


EXHIBIT  T.    (Referred  to,  p.  20.) 

Front  fhe  official  report  of  the  State  Commissioner  in  Lunacy,  in  the  case  of  the 
People  of  the  State  of  New  York  on  complaint  of  Jonathan  T.  Norton 
against  the  Society  of  the  New  York  Hospital. — {American  Journal  of  In- 
sanity^ January^  1877.) 

(Italics  our  own.) 

Page  353  :  "  The  exact  limits  of  occultation  of  her  memory,  and  the  vary- 
ing degrees  of  obscurity  exhibited  by  it  during  the  passage  of  an  umbra  or 
penumbra  over  her  ^mental  horizon.^  form  curious  phases  of  disordered  action 
in  the  processes  of  recollection,  and  impart  to  her  testimony  a  character  very 
difficult  to  weigh  in  the  balance  of  intellectual  veracity." 

Page  368  :  "Because  we  know  that  insanity  permanently  enfeebles  the 
mind,  and  that  an  act  of  self -introspection  involving  memory  becomes  thence- 
forth more  difficult.,  and  because  also,  in  the  effort  to  perform  it,  the  mind  is 
apt  to  fall  into  the  oldest  worn  channels  of  thought — those,  in  fact,  which  were 
most  used  during  the  period  of  its  greatest  insane  activity." 

"  If  this  be  the  law  governing  the  action  of  healthy  minds,  are  we  author- 
ized to  assume  that  this  law  wholly  suspends  its  action  in  disordered  minds  ? 
Or,  in  other  words,  can  we  assume  that  the  memory  gathers  strength  from 
the  weakness  of  the  organ  which  gives  it  expression  ?  I  can  find  no  author- 
ity for  such  an  expression." 

Page  382  :  "  It  is  not  surprising  that  the  public  should  deem  it  impossible, 
when  relatives  of  an   insane  person   cannot  endure  his  presence  at  home, 


'  The  passing  of  ' '  resolutions "  endorsing  the  management  of  the  par- 
ticular asylum  whose  guests  the  Association  members  are,  is  a  matter  of 
routine  nowadays. — Note  of  Sub- Committee.  , 


41 

that  strangers  should  be  kinder  and  more  forbearing  with  him  in  the  privacy 
of  an  asylum.  It  is  idle  to  criticise  this  as  sheer  ignorance;  it  is  wiser  to 
confess  that  it  is  a  feeling  of  human  nature  which  we  must  respect,  because 
born  of  our  affections,  while  at  the  same  time  it  is  our  duty  to  (dlay  the  dis- 
trust whicJi  spririr/s  from  it,  pakticularly  when  any  accidents  occur  to  the 
insane.^^ 

Page  o87  :  •'  I  am  myself  often  amazed  at  the  facility  with  which  mana- 
gers confide  the  delicate  task  of  caring  for  the  insane  to  the  persons  I  meet 
with  in  asylums  as  attendants." 


EXHIBIT  TJ.     (Referred  to,  p.  20.) 

Extracts  from  the  fourth  annual  report  of  the  Commissioner  in  Lunacy^  Jan- 
uary^ 1877. 

(Italics  our  own.) 

Page  9  :  "  Persons  really  cured  of  their  insanity  do  not  revert  with  pleas- 
ure to  the  days  of  their  mental  disorder.  They  do  not  dwell  like  hypochon- 
driacs over  their  ills  and  plagues.  It  is  a  dream  which  they  do  not  care  to  re- 
call. Happy,  grateful,  trembling  over  the  enjoyment  of  their  restored  pow- 
ers, they  are  not  the  ones  to  dabble  with  the  feet  of  memory  in  the  turbid 
waters  of  a  disturbed  mind  and  passions,  or  to  summon  a  public  audience  to 
the  recital  of  scenes  belonging  to  the  night  side  of  nature.  Persons  who  are 
constantly  reviewing  the  phenomena  of  their  past  insanity  give  the  strongest 
evidence  of  being  uncured. " 

Page  16  :  "  Wherever  men  centre  and  aggregate,  the  most  ordinary  friction 
of  life  becomes  insensibly  straining  to  the  brain.  The  sympathy  of  crowds 
is  a  recognized  fact.  The  communication  of  like  results  upon  individual  mem- 
bers is  the  first  step  in  individual  declension.  The  weakest  fall  first,  but  all 
eventually  droop  until  they  come  to  wear  a  recognized  type  of  excitability, 
which  is  associated  with  the  border-land  of  insanity.  Nor  is  it  possible  to 
compute  the  effects  upon  generations  of  men  arising  from  the  habitual  con- 
sumptions of  such  narcotics  as  tobacco  and  alcohol,  which  have  now  become 
real  necessities  of  life  to  thousands.  If  any  friction  can  more  insidiously  un- 
dermine the  nervous  system  of  man  than  that  produced  by  the  foregoing 
social  idols,  we  have  yet  to  learn  what  it  is.  Vice  has  its  periods  of  satiety 
and  disgust,  but  with  narcotics  the  game  is  always  one  of  increasing  fascina- 
tion, and  always  fatal  to  the  player.  J^one  draw  a  prize  in  it  save  disease  or 
death.  In  fact,  a  man  in  the  clutches  of  these  habits  is  digging  his  own  grave 
daily,  with  fetters  on  every  function  of  his  body  and  every  faculty  of  his 
mind.  He  is  always  less  than  he  might  be,  because  he  is  always  discounting 
his  capital  in  life,  instead  of  restricting  himself  to  the  use  of  its  natural  in- 
terest alone.      Thus,  while  living  in  the  present,  he  borrows  from  the  future. 


42 

Page  16  :  "  But  with  drunkards  and  debauchees  who  pauperize  their  fami- 
lies by  first  pauperizing  themselves,  the  descent  of  their  progeny  into  idiocy, 
imbecility,  and  the  jny  Had  phases  of  SGrofuki^  is  rapid  and  decisive." 

Page  16  :  "  Poor  food,  physiologically  speaking,  and  monotony  of  diet, 
become  so  through  its  narrow,  and  therefore  ignorant  range  of  selection,  is 
another  very  fertile  source  of  degeneracy  in  the  laboring  population,  parti-- 
cularly  of  the  agricultural  districts.  Observation  reveals  the  fact  that  for 
many  months  in  the  year  the  diet  of  the  farmer  consists  of  old  salted  meats 
and  one  or  two  starchy  vegetables.  Wheat  in  the  shape  of  fine  flour  is  the 
comraon  cereal  used,  to  which,  by  way  of  variety,  buckwheat — an  inferior  ele- 
ment of  food — is  superadded.  This  latter  would  scarcely  be  employed  were  it 
not  for  the  amount  of  molasses  which  it  invites  the  use  of  as  a  sauce,  and  the 
consequent  temptation  to  consume  it  in  excessive  quantities.  It  is  well  estab- 
lished by  our  commercial  statistics  that  Americans  consume  more  sugar  per 
capita  than  any  people  on  the  globe.  Pwk,  molasses^  and  hucJcwheat  foim  tJie 
tripod  upon  which,  in  the  Noi'thern  States,  the  demon  of  degeneracy  builds  his 
shnnein  ahnost  every  farmefs  household.  Parent  and  child  alike  worship  at  it, 
with  traditional  reverence  for  its  cheapness  and  great  facility  for  stowage.  Mean- 
while, over  the  whole  family  broods  the  perpetual  nightmare  of  dyspepsia, 
obscure  invalidism,  and  those  multiple  judgments  born  in  the  flesh,  yet  executed 
through  the  moral  nature,  which  call  for  the  physician  rather  than  the  priest 
Tfiey  are  only  chimeras  distilled  from  the  vicious  products  of  imperfect  digestion, 
and  easily  dispelled  by  physical  remedies.  The  marvel  does  not  so  much  reside  in 
their  occurrence  as  in  the  pei'sistence  of  those  habits  of  life  which  produce  them,. 
Some  call  them  ''■judgments^'^  others  call  them  ^'■crudities  j "  but,  in  either  case, 
the  condition  of  the  blood  shows  itself  in  the  character,  and,  inasmuch  as 
society  is  deeply  concerned  in  the  results  which  flow  from  phases  of  char- 
acter, the  subject  is  sufficiently  public  to  justify  comment. 

"In  this  day  of  commercial  dispersion  of  all  forms  of  food  there  can  be 
neither  necessity  nor  apology  for  living  habitually  upon  salted  meats,  and 
thus  converting  into  a  staple  article  that  which  should  be  partaken  of  only 
as  an  auxiliary  one.  If  our  farming  and  mechanic  population  would  eschew 
liquor  and  live  cleanly  without  and  within,  there  v/ould  be  fewer  invalids,  • 
paupers,  criminals,  and  lunatics.  There  is  practically  little  or  no  nutriment 
in  old  salted  meats,  the  brine  of  which  ultimately  extracts  all  the  albumi- 
nates and  phosphates,  leaving  behind  little  besides  strings  of  fibrin  and  chon- 
drine  indurated  to  the  consistency  of  parchment  by  long  contacts  with  salts  aw^Z 
potash.  And  as  for  poi'k,  its  deleterious  influence  on  the  glandular  system, 
whenever  habitually  used,  is  a  fact  too  well  known  to  require  either  argument  to 
sustain  or  commentary  to  illustrate  it.  Cursed  in  the  Scriptures  by  direct  as 
icell  as  indirect  condemnation,  its  ujie  may  be  considered  pernicious  under  any 
circumstances,  but  particularly  so  when  that  use  is  made  habitual  and  exclu- 
sive  This  is  why  farmers'  wives  and  children  show  the  ill- 
consequences  of  such  a  diet  as  pork,  salted  fish  or  meats,  and  buckwheat  ear-' 
lier  than  do  the  father  or  grown  brothers,  who  are  much  out  of  doors,  and 
also  visit  other  tables  than  their  own,  and  so  get  the  benefit  of  a  little  change. 

'•  If  farmers,  instead  of  stripping  their  farms  of  products  for  table  use,  in 
order  to  bring  them  to  market,  would  live  on  some  of  them  at  home — if  they 


43 

would  discard  as  habitual  articles  of  food  those  which  we  have  just  com- 
mented on  as  pernicious,  and  take  more  fresh  meats  and  fish,  milk  and  eg-g-s, 
graham  flour  instead  of  fine  wheat,  together  with  oatmeal  and  rich  cheese,  and 
for  vegetables,  not  potatoes  or  rice  alone,  or  beans  or  peas,  but  carrots,  onions, 
cabbage,  cauliflower,  tomatoes,  salads,  and  corn-meal,  together  with  acid 
fruits,  most  of  which  foregoing  articles  may  be  grown  on  any  farm  in  this  State, 
there  would  be  less  dyspepsia,  less  ill-health  and  indoor  iinliappiness,  less  degen- 
eracy of  children^  less  sceofula,  less  consumption,  Sind.  finally,  less  insanity." 


EXHIBIT  V.     (Referred  to,  foot-note,  p.  22.) 

Letter  from  Dr.  B.  C.  Seguin  to  Dr.  Willard  Parker,  Junior,  Dr.  Willard 
Parker,  Senior,  being  at  the  time  very  ill. 

41  West  Tw^entieth  Street, 
New  York,  December  18,  1879. 
My  dear  Doctor  : 

A  very  unjust  and  misleading  document,  called  a  Senate  Report  on  the 
.petition  for  an  inquiry  into  the  management  of  asylums,  which  was  sent  to 
the  Legislature  last  winter,  has  been  widely  circulated. 

Among  a  number  of  false  statements  is  one  which  gives  the  reader  the 
impression  that  your  father,  Dr.  Willard  Parker,  was  not  heartily  with  us, 
and  leaves  it  doubtful  if  he  signed  the  petition. 

Will  you  do  me  the  favor  to  answer,  at  the  earliest  moment  convenient  to 
you,  the  following  questions  : 

1.  Did  not  Dr.  Willard  Parker  sign  the  petition  ? 

2.  Am  I  wrong  in  recalling  his  energetic  expressions  to  the  effect  that 
asylums  needed  overhauling? 

3.  After  the  Senate  Committee's  summons,  was  he  not  still  with  us,  and 
was  he  not  indignant  at  being  summoned  as  a  witness  when  he  was  a  peti- 
tioner, praying  for  information  ? 

4.  Does  he  not  now  fully  sympathize  with  the  movement  for  asylum  re- 
form. Sincerely  yours, 

E.  C.  Seguin. 

Answer  of  Dr.  Willard  Parker,  Jr.,  to  above  letter. 

December  18,  1879. 
Dear  Seguin: 

My  father  did  sign  the  petition  you  refer  to;  was,  and  is  still,  strong 
in  his  convictions  that  many  of  our  asylums  need  "overhauling"  ;  was  in- 
dignant at  the  subpoena,  and  so  expressed  himself  in  a  letter  to  the  commit- 
tee, and  is  now  in  hearty  sympathy  with  the  expressed  object  of  to-night's 
meeting.  In  great  haste,  yours, 

W.  Parker,  Jr. 


44 

EXHIBIT  W.     (Eef erred  to,  p.  11.) 

BKOOKLYN,  129   PlERREPONT  STREET, 

December  24,  1879. 
J.  A.  McBride,  M.D., 

Chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Asylum  Abuses  : 
My  deak  Sir — In  the  printed  report  of  the  Senatorial  Committee  on 
Asylum  Abuses,  it  was  stated  that,  from  among  the  hundreds  of  registered 
physiciaus  of  Brooklyn,  there  was  only  one  whose  signature  was  affixed  to 
the  petition  to  the  Legislature.  Had  the  honorable  committee  of  our  State 
Senate  possessed  a  Medical  Register,  and  had  their  desire  for  accurate  infor- 
mation been  sufnciently  strong  to  impel  them  to  turn  over  the  pages  of  this 
book,  they  would  have  been  gratified  at  the  discovery  that  some  dozen  or 
more  names  of  those  appended  to  the  petition  were  those  of  Brooklyn's  best 
known  physicians,  and  they  would  not  have  made  a  statement  which  ran 
some  risk  of  being  regarded  as  reckless  and  unwarrantable.  As  I  obtained 
these  particular  signatures,  and  am  personally  responsible  for  them,  it  is  sim- 
ple justice  to  myself,  to  my  professional  colleagues  who  are  interested  with 
me  in  this  movement,  and  to  our  cause,  that  I  should  make  this  statemert. 

Very  truly  yours, 

Landon  Carter  Gray,  M.D. 


EXHIBIT  X.     (Referred  to,  p.  11.) 

New  York,  Dec.  26,  1879. 
Dear  Dr,  : 

Although  no  longer  a  member  of  the  committee,  I  still  take  great  inter- 
est in  its  work,  and  will  aid  in  this  work  to  the  best  of  my  ability,  if  that  aid 
is  acceptable.  In  this  view,  I  submit  the  accompanying  deposition, '  as  well 
as  the  following  lines.  I  regret  that  so  much  of  myself  has  to  appear  here- 
in ;  but,  the  tactics  of  the  Superintendent,  assisted  by  the  member  of  the 
Senate  Committee  examining,  and  who,  for  the  occasion,  acted  as  the  un- 
blushing attorney  of  the  superintendents,  force  me  to  do  as  I  have  done. 
This,  more  particularly,  because  the  distorted  account  of  my  testimony  has 
evidently  induced  certain  superficial  critics  to  assume  that  the  charges  of 
your  committee  were  based  on  personal  malice.  Historically,  this  is  false.  It 
is  a  matter  of  accessible  record  that  I  had  not  even  the  pretext  of  a  griev- 
ance against  any  superintendent  prior  to  the  day  on  which  Dr.  E.  C.  Spitzka 
read  the  paper,  in  consequence  of  the  acceptance  of  which  the  Committee 
on  Asylum  Abuses  was  appointed  ;  that  I  was  dismissed  from  my  position  un- 
der Dr.  A.  E.  Macdonnld,  because  of  the  very  moderate  part  which  I  took  in 
the  discussion,  I  demonstrated  before  the  Senate  Committee.  They  have 
not  seen  fit  to  publish  my  testimony  on  that  point,  just  as  they  have  not 
scrupled  to  suppress  many  other  things  which  I  said,  and  which,  if  published, 
would  have  deprived  the  superficial  critics  above  alluded  to  of  the  pretext 
(which  to  them,  I  think,  must  have  been  a  welcome  one)  for  condemning  the 

'  Exhibit  P. 


45 

petitioners  who  went  to  Albany,  as  neglecting  to  furnish  evidence  based  on 
personal  knowledge. 

I  had  prepared  a  report  of  the  testimony  which  I  gave  at  Albany,  the 
day  after  I  gave  it,  at  Dr.  Spitzka's  suggestion,  as  I  agreed  with  him  that 
from  the  manner  in  which  the  Senate  Committee  had  acted  while  we  were 
under  examination,  and  that  the  stenographer  was  observed  to  neglect  taking 
the  testimony  at  certain  points,  and  to  be  utterly  incompetent  to  follow  the 
speakers  at  others,  that  we  might  expect,  at  most,  a  fragmentary  report.  It 
turns  out  that  the  report  was  not  only  fragmentary,  but  mendacious  in  fact. 
Thus,  on  page  47  of  the  report  I  am  represented  as  stating  that  "  on  one  oc- 
casion I  was  asked  to  give  the  death  certificate  of  a  patient  who  had  died  in  this 
asylum  ;  I  refused  to  do  this."  Thus  making  it  appear  as  if  I  had  been  en- 
trapped into  admitting  that  I  had  been  guilty  of  insubordination.  The  fact 
is  this :  I  testified  that  "  I  was  asked  by  a  superintendent  to  sign  a  bogus 
death  certificate,  assigning  any  ordinary  somatic  affection  as  the  cause  of 
death,  in  the  case  of  Odenwald,  a  patient  who  had  perished  from  violence, 
and  that  my  refusal,  and  the  refusal  of  an  undergraduate,  who  was  asked  the 
same  thing,  forced  on  a  coroner's  inquiry,  to  defeat  the  occurrence  of  which 
the  bogus  certificate  would  have  been  necessary." 

This  is  only  one  of  many  distortions. 

There  is  another  important  matter  to  which  I  testified  from  the  most  in- 
timate personal  knowledge.  Page  5  (the  Senate  Committee  on  Public  Health) 
reports  as  follows :  "  Outside  of  the  State  asylums,  it  appears  that  but  one 
undergraduate  is  employed,  and  that  he  obtained  his  place  by  examination  as 
to  qualifications  by  the  authorized  medical  examining  committee  of  the  institu- 
tion in  which  he  is  employed. "  Without  repeating  the  testimony  which  I  gave, 
I  desire  to  state  the  following  :  The  gentleman,  who  was  a  candidate  for  a 
position  at  the  same  time  as  myself,  and  myself,  were  sent  around  to  the  res- 
idences of  Drs.  Loomis,  Wood,  and  Sands.  Dr.  Wood  was  not  at  home.  Dr. 
Sands  was  engaged,  and  Dr.  Loomis  told  me  that  he  had  so  recently  examined 
me  (as  a  candidate  for  graduation  in  :;  medical  school)  that  there  was  no  ne- 
cessity for  repeating  the  performance.  Now,  I  wish  particularly  to  state  that 
the  examining  board  composed  of  these  gentlemen  is  not  to  blame.  They 
are  merely  acting  under  higher  orders. 

This  is  the  examination  which  a  superintendent  on  page  13  of  the  Senate 
Committee's  Report  refers  to  as  "  more  of  an  examination  "  than  that  passed 
by  "many  graduates."  The  same  superintendent,  a  few  lines  lower  down, 
states  that  he  "never  heard  it  stated  that  superintendents  were  not  versed 
in  the  anatomy  of  the  nervous  system,  except  in  this  petition  and  the  news- 
paper comments  upon  it."  I  can  contradict  this,  and  within  the  corrobora- 
tive knowledge  of  many  members  of  your  committee,  as  well  as  of  the 
Medico-Legal  and  New  York  Neurological  Societies,  at  whose  March  meet- 
ings, in  the  year  1878,  two  long  papers  were  read  criticising  superintendents 
from  every  scientific  point  of  view,  at  which  this  superintendent  was  present, 
and  was  unable  to  answer  a  single  point  in  the  two  papers  named. 

After  I  left  the  Senate  Committee's  room  (much  I  regret  it  now),  after 
being  interrupted  in  my  testimony  by  Senator  Goodwin,  and  at  the  urgent 
suggestion  of  Dr.  Spitzka,  who  held  that  it  was  beneath  our  dignity  to  play 


46 

any  further  part  in  the  prearranged  comedy  enacted  by  the  Senate  Commit- 
tee, Dr.  A.  E.  Macdonald  is  represented  as  making  certain  statements  (page 
48,  S.  C.  Rep.). 

It  maybe  well  to  state  that,  previous  to  our  leaving  the  room,  Dr.  Macdon- 
ald rose  to  cross-examine  us.  Dr.  Spitzka  abruptly  refused  to  permit  him  to 
do  so.  I,  however,  offered  to  let  this  or  any  other  superintendent  cross-ex- 
amine me  if  he  would  consent  to  let  me  cross-examine  him  in  return,  both 
being  under  oath.  This  he  declined,  or  rather  Senator  Goodwin  did  it  for 
him — I  think  very  wisely. 

In  his  final  peroration  Dr.  A.  E.  Macdonald  makes  several  statements, 
which  are  all  of  them  without  any  exception  utterly  false.  As  regards  his 
statement  that  Dr.  Spitzka  was  a  "rejected  applicant  for  a  position  at  his 
asylum,"  I  will  state  of  my  own  knowledge  that  the  position  in  question  was 
merely  an  honorary  one,  and  that  Dr.  Macdonald  on  several  occasions  requested 
me  to  suggest  the  position  to  Dr.-  Spitzka,  and  after  my  doing  so,  urged  it  on 
Dr.  Spitzka  in  my  presence.  Furthermore,  in  regard  to  this  superintendent's 
denial  that  I  had  assisted  him  in  writing  the  best  paper  on  insanity  he  had 
ever  written,  a  statement  that  is  correct,  though  it  escaped  me  in  the  heat  of 

the  moment  and  under  the  irritation  of  a  cross-examination  of  the  most  un- 

* 
precedented  character,  I  submit  the  following  quotation  from  the  paper  re- 
ferred to.  It  is  entitled  "  General  Paresis,"  by  A.  E.  Macdonald  (from  the 
American  Journal  of  Insanity,  April,  1877);  on  page  3  is  the  following  state- 
ment: "  I  have  accordingly,  during  the  past  two  years  and  a  half,  with  the 
assistance  of  Dr.  James  G.  Kiernan,  of  the  asylum  staff,  engaged  in  the  col- 
lection of  material  for  the  notes  which  I  submit  this  evening." 

How  does  this  compare  with  the  statement  that  "  he  (Dr.  Kiernan)  simply 
performed  the  clerical  work,  which  was  an  apothecary's  duty — no  more  "  ?  No 
apothecary  in  the  employ  of  the  Commissioners  of  Charities  and  Correction 
ever  dreamt  that  it  was  his  duty  to  write  (clerically  or  otherwise)  the  scien- 
tific articles  of  the  physicians  over  him.  I  was  not,  as  the  acknowledgment 
shows,  an  apothecary  when  the  paper  was  written,  though  I  was  such  when  it 
was  read.  I  made  all  or  nearly  all  the  examinations  of  patients,  collected  the 
bibliographical  quotations,  and  in  doing  so  now  find  that  I  had  made  a  mis- 
quotation, which  I  do  not  think  the"  "  writer"  himself  is  aware  of,  though  I 
can  easily  point  it  out. 

I  would  not  have  violated  the  professional  amenities  so  far  as  to  make 
these  statements,  if  it  were  not  necessary  to  do  so  in  order  to  controvert 
falsehoods  reflecting  on  my  sincerity  and  truthfulness. 

I  quote  further  from  Dr.  Macdonald's  report  for  1875:  "For  a  time  I 
have  been  without  any  assistants  at  all.  It  has  been  fortunate  for  me  that 
in  the  latter  contingency,  I  have  had  the  aid  of  Dr.  James  G.  Kiernan,  the 
apothecary  of  the  asylum,  whose  former  service  as  assistant  physician,  and 
whose  industry  and  ability  rendered  him  a  valuable  ally."     From  the  report 

for  1874.       "Drs.  James  G.  Kiernan  and  M.  J.  Madigan 

They  have  been  especially  painstaking  in  the  preparation  of  the  statistics 
which  accompany  this  report,  no  small  labor  in  any  case,  and  much  increased 
in  the  present  instance  from  the  unsatisfactory  condition  of  the  records 
from  which  the  tables  had  to  be  compiled." 


47 

If  you  consider  it  desirable   that  these  facts  be  put  in  the  shape  of  an 
affidavit,  I  am  ready  to  do  so. 

Very  truly  yours, 

J.    G.   KlERNAN,   M.D. 

Dr.  T.  A.  McBbide, 

Chairman  Committee  on  Asylum  Abuses. 

I,  James  G.  Kieman,  M.D.,  of  the  City  of  New  York,  being  duly  sworn, 
do  depose  and  say  that  every  statement  of  the  f  oreg-oing  letter  is  true  and  a 
fun  and  exact  account  of  the  circumstances  mentioned  therein. 

James  G.  Kiernan,  M.D. 

Sworn  to  before  me  this  7th  ) 
day  of  January,  1880,  f 

John  H.  Timmerman, 

Notary  Public,  New  York  County. 


EXHIBIT  Y.     (Eef erred  to,  p.  11.) 

[This  exhibit  is  made  as  showing  on  what  grounds  many  of  the  petitioners 
signed,  and  what  letters  were  sent  by  them  in  reply  to  the  summons  of 
the  Senate  Committee  [Ex.  B].  It  has  been  submitted  to  the  Com- 
mittee by  Dr.  E.  C.  Harwood,  and  is  a  copy  of  a  letter  sent  to  Albany.] 

Law  Offices  of  Hull  &  Myers, 
No.  31  Park  Row,  Rooms  36,  37  and  38, 
New  York,  May  1st,  1879. 

Hon.  L.  S.  Goebel,    )  cJ^ymmittee  on  Public  Health: 
Hon,  a.  T.  Goodwin,  ) 

Gentlemen  : — Yours  of  the  26th  ult.  received.  Two  considerations  in- 
fluenced me  in  appending  my  signature  to  the  petition  before  your  Honor- 
able Committee  relating  to  lunatic  asylums  :  First,  the  statements  appear- 
ing from  time  to  time  in  the  public  press  with  reference  to  those  who  have 
been  (unfortunately)  committed  to  asylums  without  just  cause,  the  treat- 
ment received  by  some  of  the  inmates  at  the  hands  of  their  keepers,  and 
the  recent  exposure  of  the  Syracuse  afEair. 

.    Second,  the  views  expressed  by  a  physician,  in  whose  views  I  have  full 
confidence,  as  to  the  ro.anner  in  which  management  should  be  conducted. 

Personally  I  cannot  testify  to  anything  bearing  on  the  manner  in  which  the 
State  Commissioner  in  Lunacy  has  discharged  his  duties,  nor  as  to  the  inter- 
nal workings  of  asylums.  I  deem  the  appointment  of  investigating  com- 
mittees to  examine  into  the  workings  and  management  of  all  our  State  insti- 
tutions a  matter  of  public  utility,  and  if  for  no  other  reason  I  should  have 
signed  the  petition  now  before  you.  I  do  not  know  the  intention  of  the 
Committee,  but  I  venture  to  suggest  that  a  practical  way  in  which  to  investi- 
gate the  working  of  the  institutions  would  be  by  personal  visitations  by  the 


48 

Committee  among  them  at  a  time  when  those  in  charge  should  not  be  in- 
formed of  jour  intended  visit,  and  also  by  summoning  before  you  and 
■  examining  those  who  have  been  inmates  and  discharged  therefrom,  either  by 
an  order  of  the  court,  or  as  restored.  Their  names  and  residences  could 
easily  be  obtained  from  the  records  of  the  institution,  and  I  doubt  not  that 
some  would  be  found  who  would  not  be  so  beside  themselves  but  that  they 
could  give  such  experience  of  their  treatment  as  would  interest  your  Com- 
mittee, and  no  less  the  public,  in  whose  service  you  are  engaged. 

If  your  Honorable  Committee  believe  I  can  give  any  information  of  any 
value  to  them  (which  I  doubt)  I  am  ready  to  appear  at  the  time  appointed  on 
receipt  of  further  notice. 

Very  respectfully  yours, 

John  G-.  H.  Meyeks. 


EXHIBIT  Z. 

[From  the  Annual  Report  of  the  Comptroller  of  the  State  of  New  York. 
Transmitted  to  the  Legislature,  January  8,  1879.] 

Another  case  deserving  criticism  has  been  brought  to  light  in  one  of  the 
State  institutions  which  publishes  a  Journal  of  Insanity. '  This  paper  has 
been  published  for  many  years,  and  from  an  account  rendered  to  this  depart- 
ment, at  my  request,  I  learn  that  since  1850  its  bills  have  been  paid  out  of 
the  funds  of  the  iastitution  to  the  amount  of  $17,092.42.  Up  to  1856  the  in- 
stitution received  from  the  paper  .$670.53.  Since  1856,  or  for  twenty-two 
years,  the  treasurer  reports  no  receipts  from  the  paper,  but  says :  "I  have 
understood  and  believe  that  they  have  been  spent  in  editorial  services  and 
the  purchase  of  books  for  the  asylum  libraries."  It  would  seem,  then,  that 
one  at  least  of  our  charitable  institutions  not  only  has  large  miscellaneous 
receipts,  the  vouchers  for  the  expenditures  of  which  never  come  to  this  de- 
partment, but  that  it  has  receipts  the  amount  of  which  its  own  treasurer 
cannot  state,  and  the  vouchers  to  account  for  which  he  never  sees.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  properly  stigmatize  such  loose  management.  These 
instances  would  seem  to  indicate  that  much  can  be  done  in  our  institutions 
looking  toward  economy  and  prudent  management. 

My  report  for  1877  contained  the  following:  "  I  would  recommend  for 
your  consideration  the  policy  of  abolishing  all  local  boards  of  trustees,  -  and 
the  erection  of  a  system  by  which  the  different  institutions  shall  be  managed 
by  one  controlling  power.  As  it  is,  the  responsibility  for  loose  and  expensive 
management  is  notcentered  in  any  one.  If  we  are  to  look  for  improvement,  it 
can  only  be  found  in  establishing  a  fixed  and  definite  responsibility,  in  place  of 
the  present  plan,  where  there  is  practicallyTio  accountability." 

I  respectfully  renew  this  recommendation. 

F.  P.  Olcott, 

ComptroUer. 

'  It  is  almost  superfluous  to  mention  that  this  refers  to  the  Utica 
Asylum. — Note  of  Sub-  Committee. 

'  This  excellent  suggestion,  if  carried  out,  would  strike  at  the  root  of 
countle&s  other  evils. — Note  of  Suh- Committee. 


49 


EXHIBIT  AA.     (Referred  to,  p.  11.) 

State  of  New  Yokk,  ( 

City  and  County  of  New  York,  [ 

Thomas  A.  McBride,  M.D.,  being  duly  sworn,  deposes  and  says  ;  That  he 
circulated  a  Joti«  Jide  copy  of  the  petition  to  the  Legislature  for  asylum  in- 
vestigation in  the  New  York  Club,  in  the  fall  and  winter  of  1878-1879,  and 
obtained  many  signatures  to  it ;  that  among  the  signatures  afl&xed  to  this  pe- 
tition were  those  of  James  Struthers,  James  M.  Dunbar,  and  J.  Nelson  Tappan  ; 
that  Dr.  A.  E.  Macdonald  stated  in  the  rei^ort  of  the  Senate  Committee,  to 
whom  the  said  petition  was  referred,  that  he  was  authorized  to  withdraw  the 
signatures  of  these  gentlemen,  because,  in  the  case  of  two  of  them  (Messrs. 
Struthers  and  Dunbar),  the  petition  which  they  had  signed  was  one  praying 
for  an  increase  in  the  comforts  of  the  insane,  and  not  one  demanding  an  in- 
vestigation ;  and  in  the  other  case  (J.  Nelson  Tappan)  the  petition  had  been 
signed  under  the  misapprehension  that  it  was  a  club  paper.  Now,  the  said 
Thomas  A.  McBride,  on  the  contrary,  deposes  and  says  that  he  explained  the 
purport  of  the  petition  to  the  above  gentlemen,  and  saw  two  of  them  affix 
their  signatures;  and  he  deposes  further  that  each  of  the  above-named  gentle- 
men have  informed  him  since  that  they  were  induced  to  withdraw  their  signa- 
tures on  the  representations  made  to  them  by  Dr.  A.  E.  Macdonald,  that  there 
was  no  necessity  for  such  an  investigation,  and  that  the  object  of  the  petition 
was  to  satisfy  personal  malice  and  envy ;  and  Dr.  McBride  further  deposes 
that  he  saw  the  signature  of  J.  Nelson  Tappan  affixed  to  a  bona  fide  copy  of 
the  original  petition ;  that  it  was  not  signed  late  at  night ;  that  it  was  not 
signed  at  the  same  time  by  thirteen  others  under  the  impression  that  it  was 
a  club  paper  as  is  stated  in  the  Senate  report ;  and  further  deponent saith  not. 

T.  A.  McBkide,  M.D. 

Siibscribed  and  sworn  to  be- 
fore me,  this  6th  day  of 
January,  A.D.  1880. 

S.  B.  COODALE, 

Notary  PvbHc,  New  York  County. 


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